


darling the lights are pixels

by beansprout



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Android AU, Android Noctis, Android Prompto, M/M, Promnis Big Bang 2019, android gladio, lawyer ignis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-07
Updated: 2019-11-07
Packaged: 2021-01-16 15:49:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 42,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21273704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beansprout/pseuds/beansprout
Summary: Written for the Promnis Big Bang 2019!It had been ten years since the Starscourge – a virus released by a rogue android, causing others of its kind to turn against humans in a gratuitous display of violence. The virus was quickly contained, but the stain upon the androids could not be washed. Many were decommissioned, and the ones who remained found themselves back to square one to fight for the barest scraps of status and civil rights.Ignis is a young lawyer, quickly making a name for himself as a vocal activist for android rights. Needless to say his occupation earned him more enemies than friends. At one fundraiser gala, he found himself pursued by an assassin android – sent by pro-human terrorists to make a statement of his death. He managed to subdue the assassin – whose name, he discovered, was Prompto.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> PROMNIS BIG BANG 2019 BABEY. I am so excited to finally post this! I have been working so hard on this fic for the longest time, and this is my first Big Bang ever. So many deadlines, so many things to stress out... but I managed to bring this idea to life and so I am GLAD. I want to thank my editor Jessica (lifeatwarpspeed@Tumblr) for all the hard work she did polishing up the fic and the encouraging talk she gave me, and also thanks to my artist Echo (nyaactis@Twitter) :) Thanks to all the mods' hard work for coordinating all this too!  
And I hope you all enjoy the story :D

After all his years working there, it had _finally_ become common knowledge around the Nox Fleuret law practice that an evening of glamour and glitz among the elites was very much not Ignis’ idea of a good time. Any attempt to make him step up his PR game as a senior partner still required intense strategizing, a subtle approach, and in the direst of scenarios – a direct appeal to the managing partner herself, which was much like asking favors from a genie.

Still, there were events that they knew they could just propel Ignis into with minimum coaxing, and they loaded up the rare free spaces in his agenda with those. For tonight, it was a fundraiser for a housing project for androids. The secretary had just dropped the invitation on Ignis’ desk, rented him a tuxedo, and he’d made his way here during the cocktail hour by himself, not even needing adult supervision. For several hours he’d been sipping champagne and enduring an endless stream of canapes, each one seemingly tinier than the last, trying to make idle conversation with socialites so that he wouldn’t appear too aggressive or overeager when he brought up his real agenda with the people that mattered. 

It had been ten years since the events of the Starscourge – the virus released by a rogue android to infect the entire network governing the then-popular workforce and second-class citizens. ‘Malfunction’ was the word that was generally used to describe the events that followed, though that was an understatement if Ignis had ever heard one. ‘Insurgence’ was another – as in, ‘android insurgence’ – a term that Ignis argued bitterly against, because it implied the androids had planned it themselves instead of having it forced onto them. There was no way around it, however. Whatever you call the events, it had been a pure, mindless massacre. People died horribly. Androids died, too – they were dead, their minds and entire existence utterly unraveled before they even took up the weapons that their bodies required to commit their act of butchery. But it was a technicality that not many people were interested about and most found it more convenient to forget altogether. 

Androids were decommissioned en masse – another euphemism – as a result, and any talk in progress at the time about reviewing their citizenship and status in society became moot. Any illusion about making them autonomous, functional human beings was completely shattered. It was worse than returning to square one. Ten years after, the battle for the androids’ civil rights was like it hadn’t even begun at all. It was an uphill battle where one had to claw their way up from a pool of quicksand – and, of course, Ignis had to be at the center of it.

The android housing project had not been his brainchild, but he had had a hand in helping it come into existence. After months working pro bono, poring over contracts, advising against one financial structure and arguing for another, applying for countless government grants and writing many rousing speeches for others to deliver, they were finally at the fundraising stage. And it wasn’t because the work was done in a glittering ballroom under a crystal chandelier, around tiny food and bubbling, gold champagne, that it was any less grueling. 

After politely sending away the last senator after a string of many, Ignis had a strong urge to loosen his tie and knock back a whole flute of that champagne like a shot. Instead, he found a discreet alcove to retreat into. Here, he could finally drop his public face for a little and enjoyed a moment of total clarity, unobfuscated by conversational maneuvers. Just a good long look at the crowd, so he could remind himself of the vision he was working towards and gather the strength to keep going. 

Ignis was relieved that the organizers at least had the good sense not to hire androids as servers. Yes, androids were catering to the food, but the android by the name of Coctura, who was setting fires to aburi salmon rolls at the sushi bar and expertly constructing futuristic-looking hors d’oeuvres, was treated as a celebrity – a master of her arts – and not a symbol of servitude. Ignis would like to try her creations himself, if only as an excuse to get a little closer to the chef and exchange a few words about techniques and ingredients. But he was supposed to be working, and he would be quite embarrassed if he had to justify that expense to Lunafreya. 

Many of the androids were here as donors, also. Ignis had seen Nyx and his security consultants, the GLAIVES, zipping around the banquet hall, talking loudly and laughing in good spirits. The check that Nyx had pledged was the amount of an entire quarter’s revenue from his firm, but he’d insisted that they would make it. The Astrals6 were not physically present, but they rarely were. It didn’t make their contribution any less palpable, however. Their presence was symbolized in abstract swirls of colors on a monitor presiding over the central banquet table, and the music slowly pumping through the stereo system had every bit of their signature otherworldly style. Even for a band as prolific, releasing an entire album and donating every cent of proceeds to the cause was more than generous. 

Ignis caught sight of the founder and president of LUCIS Corp., Regis Caelum, as he was being wheeled past by his steel-faced (and shockingly, actually human) bodyguard. There had been a lot of rumors about his health, whispers about an early retirement. But the check he had just signed promised, if anything, that the leading company in android technology had at least regained their footing – and that the hits they had taken with the Starscourge scandal had not been able to knock them out of the game. 

All of this was a good sight to take in, but it was only a tentative first step. While it was important for the public to perceive androids as creative, entrepreneuring, masters of their own set of values and morals, Ignis preferred to leave that philosophical debate to other people. His concerns were of practical matters. He spear-headed the combat to demand legal recognition of androids’ civil rights, and it hadn’t taken Ignis long to realize how revealing that work was. Over the years, he’d come into contact with people who claimed to support androids, but who then suddenly became uncomfortable when confronted with the idea that androids might deserve the same rights as they did. 

Ignis managed to wipe that thought out of his head just in time to return a smile sent in his direction by the mayor’s wife. It was close, though – he was nearly caught frowning. Smoothing the front of his shirt, he berated himself for letting his mind wander. His focus was unbalanced this evening, and it was becoming clear that something was off kilter though Ignis was still unable to put his finger on it. It was starting to make him uneasy.

And then Ignis saw _him_.

It was hard to tell with any confidence whether he was human or android at first. That was not alarming in itself. While some androids liked to flaunt what they were, making a statement with unnatural colorings and flashing lights, others simply preferred to blend in. This man seemed to have chosen the second camp, as his overall appearance gave an impression of average. He was of average height, average built, with his straw-blond hair in an unassuming haircut. In his nondescript black suit, he shouldn’t even have drawn a second glance. He even had a good reason for wanting to blend in: his hands clutched a large camera that he occasionally raised, looking through the viewfinder and taking a shot. Indeed, photographers were supposed to be part of the background, and as in the pictures they took – the focus was always supposed to be on someone else. 

But if you looked for only three seconds at him, you noticed things. His eyes, for instance, were a shade of forget-me-not purple-blue. The color was not common but not that shocking either, and it suited him well. What didn’t suit him was the strange, almost disconcerting way his eyes behaved. They gave only the merest skims to very important, very influential people – the usual preferred targets of event photographers. In the meantime, his eyes lingered over doors, servers and waitresses, as if they held the secret to the universe. And, once Ignis started to pay attention, he noticed something else. 

After having wandered all around the room, taking in all details as meticulously as a swallow pecking breadcrumbs, the blond man’s eyes always return to settle on Ignis. 

Ignis would have to be a much vainer man to mistake that look for something as flattering as interest. There was something uncanny about the way that each time the blond man looked at Ignis, his eyes would move over him from top to bottom in a pattern – as if completing a mental checklist. And he was inching his way ever closer. Indeed, when Ignis had first noticed him, the blond had been standing near the dessert cart with a flute of champagne in his hand. Now, he was lurking just behind a clutter of journalists, just far enough away to be polite but still close enough that he could be mistaken for one of them, pretending to study with forensic interest half a piece of chocolate cake someone had left behind.

As he watched the man’s progress through the room, Ignis’ unease only grew. His movements were so deliberate Ignis had to follow them closely to make out a pattern. He wouldn’t have gotten it if coincidence hadn’t had Nyx and his GLAIVES barreling through the hall in loud carousing company. They walked right into the space the blond occupied as if he hadn’t been there at all. 

At the very last moment before the collision, the man side-stepped the party. The entire group went on past him, close enough that Nyx’s sleeve brushed his arm and a strand of the man’s blond hair swayed in the wake of Nyx’s movements. And yet, the GLAIVES – some of the most sophisticated androids in the world, famous for their uncanny perception of their environment – all went past him, to a one, as if they hadn’t even noticed he was there.

A lot of things clicked in Ignis’ mind then, and fast. The blond man was _shielded_. He was generating a null sphere that prevented other androids – and most likely, most electronic devices as well – from detecting him. Such a device was more expensive than an EMP, but also infinitely subtler. This explained the strange pattern according to which the blond was weaving his way around the room. Half of the guests were androids, so he had to make sure the disruptions weren’t so obvious – that, say, none of the androids would see one of theirs walk into what looked to them like thin air and bounce back several steps as if they’d walked into a wall instead. That would surely confuse them enough to start asking questions.

Once the facts were made obvious, it was what they implied that got Ignis’ mind whirring. If his knowledge on event organization was still up to date, there would have to be human security agents, at the door and several more on reserve in a break room, ready for emergencies. If the blond man was only carrying protection against other androids, it could only mean that he was confident about being able to handle most if not all human opponents that might come after him. The odds that he was an android were stacking up. 

Ignis could only think of one reason why an android would take so many expensive precautions when coming to a specifically android-friendly event. He was _trouble_, and if the way he kept looking to Ignis was any indication, that trouble was probably reserved specifically for him. 

Ignis was no stranger to threats, obviously. One simply could not be as vocal as he was in such a controversial field without facing some sort of backlash. He’d faced plenty of graffitied walls and punctured tires. He’d walked through plenty of crowds picketing the firm’s office building, usually before or after any high-profile case. But this? This was something else. This was targeted malice. This was someone going through a lot of trouble to bypass security, clearly looking to cause serious mischief, even harm. 

And, just in case the harm was aimed not only at Ignis but also at the other people present here tonight, Ignis had to do something about it.

Instead of waiting in a corner like a sitting duck for the stranger to come to him, Ignis decided he would go to the man instead. And so, the next time the man glanced over, Ignis met his gaze fair and square before he could even start on his strange checklist of Ignis’ body. The man immediately tried to avert his eyes, but obviously Ignis’ stare had done the trick. The blond’s gaze was drawn to him, helplessly, like a songbird hypnotized by the eyes of a snake. 

Unable to run away, he just stood there as Ignis strode across the room to come to his side. Whoever said androids could not feel human emotions had only to see the man’s look of despair – blue eyes wide and body freezing, locked at the apex between fight and flight, perfectly like a deer in headlights – to know it was far from the truth.

“Don’t move,” Ignis said, as if he was offering only a friendly piece of advice, trying to appear like he was studying his dessert options. “You may have found a way to stay invisible against Nyx and his associates, but they’re not blind to the rest of us. If I’m to react, surely they couldn’t fail to realize something is amiss.” 

The man reached out as if to take a cake, and then jerked his hand back in a marionette-like compulsive movement, almost knocking over an empty cocktail glass – if Ignis had not flung out his own hand to rescue it. The man winced violently, as if the glass really had been broken, and jerked himself further away. Ignis’ eyebrows furrowed as he caught the barest sight of a barcode, but he managed to keep the rest of his distaste off of his face. He drew a deep breath, reminding himself that the blond android was not the one to blame, not for any of this. Instead, he leaned in a little closer, making his voice low and soothing, “I can help you.”

To his dismay, the blond jerked several further steps away. 

“D-Don’t do that,” he said. It was jarring. His expression remained neutral, impassive, even vaguely bored as his gaze dropped a little lower, now contemplating the floor at Ignis’ feet. His voice, betraying everything else, was young and soft, and unless Ignis had let his white knight complex completely take over his mind, he also sounded a little scared. “Don’t—don’t play with my head. You’re just the same as everyone else. You’re lying.” He looked up, glowering - somehow managing to muster up a meager measure of defiance even if he immediately shrunk away as if expecting to be hit for it. “Everyone who’s said they’re there to help, is lying.”

Ignis should be used to this. Degradation, desperation – he’d seen enough androids broken down for a lifetime. And yet, right now, Ignis felt like he was standing in a bucketful of ice. He was increasingly glad for his decision to approach the man – perhaps he _did_ have a sixth sense for androids in distress, just like Luna had said. Now, if he could only juggle this incredibly delicate communication, he could save not only himself, but this android too.

No matter how much Ignis was empathizing with him, however, the android was still a threat. And so, the philanthropist in him must go away, and the lawyer must come out. “I suppose you’d be right most of the time,” he relented, staying where he was. No need to make the blond feel even more trapped than he already felt. A look around the room showed that nobody had paid attention to them just yet, and Ignis planned to keep it that way. “I even have a good reason to lie to you. You’re here to kill me, are you not?”

The blond’s head whipped up so fast Ignis felt the whiplash in sympathy. His eyes widened, pupils dilating and retracting in complex sequences, a sure sign of optical scanners at work. Ignis kept himself utterly still, his mind fixed on his only goal – to get the both of them out of trouble. 

Androids might not be able to read one’s eyes to tell truth from lies, but their scans and analysis could be shrewd in a way that human instincts couldn’t be. Still, the readings could be quite misleading, and a hairline’s trigger could flip the result one way to the other. To prevent just that, Ignis stopped everything else – his thoughts, even his basic bodily functions on hold, and just focused on believing in that goal with his whole body.

Slowly, the man calmed. He gave Ignis a furtive look, as if ashamed of his task despite everything else, and nodded.

“I see.” Ignis was surprised at how calm he was managing to be. “Just me?” At the second nod, he even let out a sigh of relief. ‘Just him’ meant that there would be no bomb, no biochemical weapons, no need for an evacuation. At least for now. “Any particulars?”

The look that the blond shot him was one of mixed disbelief. It was only a small step, but at least Ignis’ apparent casualness in discussing the details of his own demise had broken through the carefully blank expression that the android had been wearing. Ignis wasn’t actually all that indifferent about dying, but before he panicked, he owed it to all the people present here to gather at much intel as he could. The fact that he inquired for that information as leisurely as if he was asking a coffee house for their selection of roasts and blends was only a matter of self-control and habit.

There was a bit of a pause where the android was clearly analyzing whether Ignis’ question was merely rhetoric. Ignis supposed his own expression didn’t really inspire jokes, as the man decided to answer the question quite seriously. “Public,” he replied in a stiff, halting cadence that implied that none of this was his idea and he was only repeating his orders. “The null sphere self-destructs when weapon systems are triggered. I’m to carry out the execution at close range. As many witnesses as possible.”

“I… see.” Now Ignis was barely able to say those two simple words in a neutral tone. Hard to, when one was staring at the prospect of one’s own public execution. As far as statements went, _that_ would be quite impactful. Ignis didn’t miss out on the irony in having an android cut down one of their own advocates, either. He could already imagine the headlines, but that was enough thinking about himself. “Any extraction plans?”

The android shook his head. Really, what else could Ignis expect from such a plan? The moment the android made his move, the null sphere would deactivate, allowing every camera in the room to get an angle on the action. Then every security detail here would be after him, and he would be on his own to escape. Except he wouldn’t, because with his only trump card expired, he would easily be captured. He would be paraded around as a criminal, to be put on trial and serve as a rallying symbol for the anti-android extremists. “You know—” Ignis said, not unkindly, “—your odds of making it out of here are extremely low, right?”

The android spared him a flick of eyes up from under pale eyelashes. His hand flexed in a nervous gesture that reminded Ignis, of all things, of that video games series that Noctis was so fond of – the one with an order of assassins who ran around wearing hidden blades strapped to their wrists that they activated with a flick of their hands. (It was exactly as great a peril to their fingers as it sounded, as the game itself had made it clear multiple times.) The gesture seemed to bring courage to the android, and he mumbled at last, “Still beats heading directly to the recycling plant.”

“I can respect that.” At that, the android gave him a single expression of great disgust, which Ignis respected, also. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but as long as the null sphere remains active, your… employer couldn’t have eyes on you?” 

The android took a moment before he answered that, glancing over his shoulder to check that their conversation was still unnoticed. It was, but sooner or later someone will recognize Ignis and saunter over for a friendly chat. The presence of a witness would as good as force his would-be assassin into action, and then the chance at negotiation would go up in smokes. Even knowing this, Ignis wouldn’t allow himself to rush the blond, but he had to admit he was relieved when the blue-purple eyes turned back to him, scanners working overdrive, the lenses and sensors hidden in the pupils blown so wide the eyes looked almost all black. “No,” the android said finally, and it was like dropping a lure. Waiting to see what kind of fish Ignis had to offer.

“Then I will say again, I can help you. You know who I am?” When the android gave Ignis a blank look that somehow managed to look baleful and judgmental, Ignis backtracked with a little laugh. “Excuse me, I did not say that with the intention to brag or threaten. I want you to know about my occupation, which is to aid androids like you.” The android lifted his eyes skyward in an approximation of an eye-roll, because _yeah, right_. Ignis pressed on. “I realize how convenient that sounds. I have to admit my experience of helping my would-be assassins is extremely limited. What I mean is, I make it my specialty to get androids out of situations that were forced onto them. You need only to look around you. This event is to celebrate the cohabitation and collaboration of androids and humans. Why else would there be so many of us mingling? Why else would your null sphere be so efficient and necessary?”

The blond android refused to take his eyes off of Ignis, not even to glance at the crowd to double-check the human-android ratio. Ignis didn’t wait for a comment and instead carried on with what would be his villain monologue, if he were a movie villain. “I’ve helped argue for better rights and protection for androids, but I don’t only wage wars on paper. I’ve met many androids like you, who were coerced to work against their will. I’m sure you’re better aware than me how easy it is to create a being that could be completely under one’s thumb and blame them for everything that went wrong in the world. It’s a deplorable situation that I’m doing my small part to fix.” He held the android’s gaze, allowing him an easier reading of his eye movements and pupil dilation for all his analytical needs. He had made his grand declarations, and now was the time to make more concrete, personal claims. “I can make sure your employer never puts their hands on you ever again. I know people who can lock them out of your head. Most importantly, I know there can be more to your life than this.” It would be ill-advised to make sudden, broad movements, so Ignis only spread his hands a little. “I can show you. I can _prove_ it to you. I can help you find yourself, if you only do me the honor of trusting me.”

As a lawyer, Ignis should be used to much lengthier speeches than that, but this one still left him short of breath and his heart beating wildly. Every argument he had ever made, he’d always put every ounce of his conviction in the delivery. There was no other choice, because the case he made to the jury would mean the life or destruction of an android’s existence. This, though, was something more. He wasn’t just using his conviction. He was channeling everything that he was, and all he ever would be. It felt like every piece of his personal history, every twist and turn of his career, had been contrived so that he could stand here, now, face to face with this android who had showed more complexity in fifteen minutes than some flesh-and-blood humans over their entire life. It felt like everything that Ignis had ever learned and every person that he’d ever cross path with all contributed to this moment, making sure Ignis had every tool he required for this mission: to set this android free.

If he was the kind to believe in such things, if he was the kind to make such talks… Why, Ignis would probably say that it felt like fate.

With the best of his speeches delivered and the android focused in thoughts, there was nothing for Ignis to do but to wait, and he took the chance to observe the android closely. He wondered if the blond had always been this expressive. Was there a switch somewhere inside an android’s brain circuits to fiddle with, to regulate the depth of his furrowed brows or to slow the pace of fluttering, pale, synthetic eyelashes? Was there a lever one could pull to stop the tongue from peeking out between the lips as the man was deep in thoughts? And if androids didn’t have to breathe, then why was his chest heaving as if he was trying to suppress the fluttering of actual butterflies? Some would argue that it was simple mimicry, behaviors that androids had stolen to blend in with their human counterparts. Maybe it was so, but they didn’t seem to have any more controls over such reactions than humans did – or else they would’ve turned them off when it suited them to become unreadable. Who would want to appear this helpless and vulnerable while others watched on? No, if there was a switch or a dial, they were well hidden beyond the reach of such stimuli as electric or chemical signals that humans had discovered.

Some people thought it undermined the ‘miracle’ of life to reduce thoughts and feelings to a string of zeroes and ones, dots and dashes as primitive as Morse code. Ignis, for his part, believed the opposite. With how little humans knew about how emotions work, wasn’t it just a wonder that he could look at this android’s face and _know_, without any scanner of sensors, that he was about to place his life in Ignis’ hands?

“What do I have to do?” the man said, his voice very small as he held his gaze steady. As if, if he faltered and threw a furtive glance behind his back, then this entire shaky prospect of his freedom would collapse like a pillar of salt. Ignis watched the way his fingers tighten around the camera and reconsidered the tone of his next words. He took away some levity – in case the android would take it as mockery – and added in solemnity. But in essence, the content was the same.

“Nothing, for now. As long as the null sphere is active, your employer can’t get to you. We’ll play that in our favor. The first order of business is, I suppose, to get you out of here before anyone notices you’re not on the guest list.” Ignis thought for a second, and added, “Or the staff list.” It was good to have something rational to work with. It took some of the tension from Ignis, and he finally emerged from the fog of confusion that had descended onto him. 

“I don’t have anywhere to go,” the android said, anticipating the next problem. He seemed almost… ashamed, as if any of this was his fault. “I was… decommissioned. On my way to the trash heap. Ready to feed the compactor.” This wording was too specific in its spitefulness that Ignis doubted the android had come up with it himself. “My… employer diverted the truck and took us in at his lab. I don’t know where that is,” he added quickly, as if worried Ignis would pry. “I was only debriefed, then put to sleep, and brought here in a van. Other than the lab I… don’t know any place.”

The apology wasn’t necessary and neither was the excuse, but Ignis was glad that the android was willing to share a little of his background. He shook his head distractedly, tapping his chin in thoughts. “If you’re comfortable with it, I can put you up at my apartment for the time being. It’s not big, but there’s a spare room that you can make yourself comfortable in until morning. Then I can take you to a… specialist, to remove the null sphere and find other means to shield you from your employer’s influence. Once that’s done—” _Once you stop being a danger_, Ignis didn’t say, “—I can help you find a place in one of the android rehabilitation programs that I work with.”

The blond bit his lip, and Ignis was once again hit with wonder. Who could see such a spontaneous display of emotions and attribute it to mere puppetry? When the android looked at him again, his eyes were bluer than ever – scanners and detectors all shut off, leaving just the two of them, eye to eye, face to face. “Alright. Sounds like a good plan.” The android said that with what Ignis would call resigned enthusiasm. What he really meant was, Ignis supposed, _Sounds like you at least won’t tear out my valuable bits and throw the rest of me in a ditch._

“Good,” Ignis said simply. To hide his nerves, he pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and crisply stuck out a hand to the blond. “My name is Ignis. Glad to be of help.” When the android failed to respond to either the gesture or the introduction, Ignis drew his hand back before things could get awkward. It would seem silly, but it was now that he started to feel out of his depths. “Erm. Is there anything I can call you?”

The android gave Ignis a slow, long look, then he held out a wrist with his eyebrows raised in challenge. When he pulled up his sleeve, Ignis got a good look at the bar code that he had only glimpsed earlier. It said _N-iP01357_ and _05953234_. 

Ignis let himself be startled into a small, embarrassed laugh, as this meant certainly that the android had caught him staring at the bar code earlier and did not hesitated to throw it back in his face. Even if, aware of his cheekiness, the android was already wincing in expectation of a blow. When that blow failed to come, he just scoffed and averted his eyes. “Apologies,” Ignis said, clearing his throat. “I deserved that. Not only for asking a silly question, but also for being nosy.” 

The android didn’t answer at first. But after a while, he allowed Ignis a little benevolence. “I suppose it could be a mouthful,” he offered grudgingly, which made Ignis almost hold his breath. The blond had offered an _opinion_. And he was not even done yet. “My employer—” he said, intonating each word like pulling teeth, “—gave each of us a codename. He called me… Quicksilver.” He stopped short right after pronouncing that word, as if the name was a live rat that he had just had to swallow. “But I don’t like to hear it.”

“Naturally,” Ignis agreed. It was only thanks to years of practice that he could still cling to his calm and composure. It was his fault to bring this topic up in the first place, and now he must see this experience end as quickly and as painlessly as possible. What he was offering up was only the word ‘quick’ in another language, so it was hardly a stroke of genius – rather obvious and inelegant – but it was the best he got for now. “How about Prompto?”

The android nodded. Ignis suspected that he would’ve nodded at anything as long as it didn’t sound like the name he hated, desperate as he was to get out of this situation. Ignis was feeling a mix of relief and the nagging dissatisfaction of knowing he could’ve done better, but he pushed it down for now. “Come on then, Prompto,” he said, testing out the name, and it at least rolled naturally off his tongue. “My car is parked right outside.”

The drive home was quiet. Ignis tried long and hard to think of something he could say – only to shut himself up the moment he glanced over at Prompto. The android was clearly terrified out of his mind – sitting bolt upright and clutching his camera, which he still wore around his neck and carried in front of him like a photographer on the job. He was gripping the camera so tightly Ignis was surprised the plastic casing hadn’t fallen all into pieces. To a man grasping at straws, trying to hold onto the last relic of his old life, hated as that life was, any attempt from Ignis to sell him a better life or an _everything-would-be-alright_ routine would be tasteless. 

And so, when he did speak, what slipped out from his lips was a ridiculous question that had been nagging at the back of his mind. “Does it work?”

Ignis hadn’t spoken very loudly, but Prompto still jumped several inches in his seat. If he hadn’t been strapped in, the top of his head would probably have gone through the top of the car. He glanced over suspiciously. “What?”

Perceiving that it was too late to back out of this conversation, Ignis gestured to the camera. “Does it work, with the null sphere?”

“Oh.” At that soft exclamation, Ignis cheered softly inside. The topic had achieved the feat of breaking Prompto from his straight-necked, stiff-backed, frozen stare. The android looked down at his camera and an expression of almost fondness flickered across his face. His grip eased by degrees, and then Prompto was even stroking this thumb over the smooth plastic casing, as if the camera was a pet that had been spooked and needed reassuring. “It works just fine. It’s a manual camera, and I put a roll of film in.” He glanced to Ignis, as if expecting disbelief, then continued, “I know how to operate it because my employer uploaded the manual. He said it’d make for better credibility. The pictures are in there all right.”

“I see,” Ignis hummed. And, since he had already started to indulge his curiosity, he saw no other way but to follow through. “Any good shots?”

The silence that went on after that was almost long enough for Ignis to be puzzled. When he could safely take his eyes off the road, he glanced over to Prompto to see a melting pot of emotions. Disgust and fascination mixed, contentment and fear mingled. In the end, Prompto looked somewhat… pleased, Ignis hoped, that he’d asked the question. “A few,” he said finally with what could be almost a smile. The first. He cradled the camera closer in his lap, stroking it like praising a pet for a trick well done. “It’s a good camera, and… I had a good subject.”

*

As the backlashes to his activism became more intense, Ignis had relented to Lunafreya’s ultimatum: to find himself a place with better security, or to be taken off the roster of every android case ever. _I can’t afford to lose the firm’s top-billing lawyer to some tire-slashing, glass-smashing hooligan_, she’d said, and the two of them had stared at each other for a second before succumbing to a contained, subdued, but still uncontrollable giggle. They both knew that with all the time Ignis was spending on pro bono work, he was lucky he wasn’t the _lowest_ billing partner in the firm’s entire history. Sure, the cases he worked on were high profile, but he doubted the exposure was anything but bad publicity. Still, if he even breathed the idea of resigning, Luna was quick to clobber him out of it. _This firm has a vision_, she had told him. _And I’m not going to let any of my people get punished for pursuing it_. 

If he was to be perfectly honest, the main reason Ignis took so long to find a new place was... procrastination. He knew he was picky. He didn’t think his standards were that lofty, but they sure were particular. The prospect of browsing hundreds of apartments before finding one to replace his cozy (albeit low security) home exhausted him. Luna’s ultimatum had only forced him into action. The search had been exactly as harrowing as Ignis as expected, but, eventually, Ignis had found a place.

And it was here that he was bringing Prompto now. It took an ID and thumb scan to access the underground carpark, then he had to wave to the security guard through the overhead camera in order to get him to manually lift a barrier. Once he’d parked in his designated place, he had to flash a badge then spoke to a voice scan device to gain access to the elevator, which carried them to his floor. His door itself was secured with a number of digital and traditional locks that Ignis took a while to undo. 

It was all tricky, considering that Ignis was trailing a visitor invisible to the electronic eye. By sheer luck rather any cleverness from his part, no alarm was raised. Once they both were inside the confines of Ignis’ home, where there was no camera except for the one that Prompto was still carrying, Ignis could finally let out a breath. 

Sensing his presence, the lights flickered on. Ignis couldn’t help but feel as though this was the moment to say something incredibly tacky, like _home sweet home_ or _welcome to my humble abode_, but he decided against it. He was trying to show Prompto a normal life. He wasn’t going to do either of them a favor by acting like a character from a Hollywood flick. 

“Sorry, it’s a bit messy,” he said finally, reaching over to the rack for his shoehorn, using it to pry off the dress shoes that his feet had been screaming in for the last few hours. When he stepped aside to make room for Prompto to enter, he caught the look of utter confusion on the android’s face, and then the error of his ways crashed into Ignis like a train wreck. He would’ve been better off acting like a character from a Hollywood flick. First of all, Prompto’s frame of reference might have been limited, but even he must know that one coat hanging from the back of a chair and a single book off the shelf languishing on the coffee table did _not_ constitute the definition of ‘messy’. Secondly, when Ignis handed the shoehorn over he might have been giving Prompto an alien lifeform, for the way Prompto was giving it a fixed stare that clearly meant he was scanning it, perhaps even adding it to a database labeled ‘household items owned by people who are not messy.’ 

For his part, Prompto opted for the traditional approach, which was to get down on one knee to undo the shoelaces and peeling each shoe off. His feet were bare under the shoes, and when he stood again, he flexed his toes as if to test their grip on the floor, as if he might float and fly away otherwise. Then, once he had made sure he was firmly rooted, he took in the apartment. 

Sufficed it to say that Ignis had spent most of his savings on the apartment itself and considerably less on furniture. And frankly, Ignis still didn’t see the need to replace his aged, mismatch chairs and shelves. On the ocean of parquet floor that was his spacy apartment he had built himself islands of coziness. Stacks of vinyl records formed a kind of fortress around a pile of cushions and blankets in a mix of materials and patterns. The couch, with a quilt thrown over it, had it back against bookshelves, all his favorites within arm’s reach. Tropical plants burst in controlled chaos inside a greenhouse, condensation beading the surface of the glass. The bed with its costly linen sheets was one of Ignis’ guilty pleasure. The desk was lined with stacks and boxes of documents to either side, but it was facing the door-to-ceiling window – so that when he looked up when he was working, Ignis would have a moment of weightlessness – like he was sitting at a desk that floated about eighty feet in midair. 

Oh, and of course his kitchen counter was the definition of indulgence, but this was not the time to unpack all of that.

Prompto took his time taking in the apartment. After having swept his gaze over it several times, he turned to Ignis. “You don’t have a charging dock.”

He was taken aback then, embarrassed that he had overlooked this vital detail. “That’s—right,” Ignis conceded, trying to think as he worked off his rented tuxedo jacket and carefully draping it over the back of a chair. He looked uncertainly around his own home, as if some part of his brain was hoping a charging dock might miraculously pop up, even if the rational part of him knew full well there was literally no reason in the world for him to own one. “I don’t, erm, employ androids. And this is the first time that I host one personally. But don’t worry, this is only a temporary solution. The goal is still to put you up in housings that are properly equipped to your needs.” As soon as he’d finished, Ignis regretted how terribly impersonal that had sounded. “For now, maybe I can offer you some other form of energy? Do you take food or drink?”

The silence after the question stretched out until eventually Prompto shook himself, only then realizing that the question was addressed to him. “I—don’t know,” he confessed, his entire body composing an essay on discomfort and misery, and yet, there was earnestness as he continued, “But I can check the user’s manual. One sec.”

Just like that he went away, not physically, but into his own head. Ignis stood there rather uncomfortably as Prompto wore the blank look of an android who was navigating their own OS, digging into their factory files. From what Ignis had heard, it was just as dangerous and unpleasant as it sounded, and Ignis just wanted to curse. For a man who claimed to work with androids for a living, that was remarkably tactless of him. He was lucky Prompto hadn’t taken offense and cut his lying throat right on the spot. 

Prompto had chosen to trust him, and within less than half an hour Ignis was already confronted with the question whether or not he deserved that trust.

Lucky for him, Prompto, having found his answer, shook himself back to awareness still blissfully unaware of Ignis’ internal crisis. “I can process food and drink,” he declared, almost triumphantly. “But nothing with animal proteins in it. The energy output will be minimal, so I guess that’s why nobody had ever bothered.”

“That’s alright,” Ignis was quick to latch onto his way out. He headed over to the kitchen counter, filling a kettle and placing it on its socket to boil. “We could have a cup of tea, if you like.” He pulled the tins off from the cabinet, lining them up in a neat row at the edge of the counter. “The point is not to pick out the best tea. Just what you’d like to try first.”

He could only imagine how surreal this day had been for Prompto. Only an hour ago he had been an android on a suicide mission. Now he was on the run from his employer, a ruthless organization that didn’t have any qualms about killing. And here Ignis was, acting like the picking of a tea for a late-night cup was some sort of meaningful act. He half-expected to see some of Prompto’s attitude again, but the android seemed genuinely interested in this exercise. Methodically, he picked up each tin of tea, opened the lid to take a sniff, then carefully replaced everything as it had been. Once he reached the end of the row, he returned to the top – just like the cursor on a typewriter, all that was missing was that little ‘ding’. And then, with the uncertainty of someone who had not gotten to make many choices in their life, he touched the side of one tin with his fingertips. “I would like to try this one...?” He said it with a sort of reserved enthusiasm, phrasing it as a question to give himself a way out, a possibility to backtrack if it was the wrong answer. 

As if there was a wrong answer to such a question. “Good choice,” Ignis said, picking up the tin, opening the drawer for tea spoons and infusers. “Could you fetch two mugs, please? They’re in that drawer. Just pick any two that catch your fancy.” 

Personally, Ignis was pleased with Prompto’s choice. The tea was one of his more exciting blends, featuring ginger and lemongrass. It was the perfect touch to a grey evening where he felt dull and needed a spark. Plus, the scents of the ingredients were strong enough that even if the tea was a bit spicy, no one could say they weren’t warned. 

When Ignis had gotten the infusers filled and ready, he turned to see the two mugs that Prompto had lined up. The android was looking a little less worried about his performance this time – in fact, he was looking to Ignis as thought he was hoping for another praise.

Ignis blushed.

He could see that Prompto had been just as thorough and methodical with the mugs as he’d been with the tea. The drawer that Ignis had pointed to held some two dozen mugs in it, with his most favorite front and center, and older or less loved articles at the back. Prompto had gotten to the bottom of it during the two minutes that Ignis had looked away and had pulled out two monstrosities of mugs that Ignis had rather hoped to forget. They had been a gift from Gladio when the man had visited the Moogle and Chocobo Carnival for the first time. One was in the shape of a Chocobo with a big head, round blue eyes and a soft looking rounded beak, the other featured a Moogle with a squinty smile and the antenna as a handle. They both looked friendly and absolutely dorky, and Ignis couldn’t believe he still owned them. 

In his embarrassment, it took Ignis a while to notice that his silence had made Prompto uneasy. “I’m sorry,” the man was saying, his hand hovering over the mugs like he wanted to do something to fix his error, but wasn’t sure what. “Wasn’t I supposed to…?”

“No, no,” Ignis said quickly, shaking his head. To reassure Prompto, he brought the infusers over, plopping them definitively into the mugs and poured the hot water. “I just… didn’t expect you to find these. I never used them—they were kind of a gag gift.”

“They’re cute,” Prompto said. Ignis felt Prompto’s eyes glued onto his person as he put the kettle away – recording every movement, perhaps, or making note of the temperature of the kettle, or analyzing the tea leaves vs. water proportion. Or perhaps just studying the way Ignis picked the mug up and cupped it between his hands, because Prompto mimicked it and seemed to fully embrace the comfort. “They’re from the Moogle and Chocobo Carnival,” he offered shyly. “I’ve seen the flyers. I think… I used to want to work there.”

Ignis didn’t ask what he had actually worked as instead.

“You can keep them, if you like,” he said. When Prompto looked up at him with huge eyes, alarmed, as if this was a trap, he hurried to add, “They’re not being used much where they are. You can take them with you when you go to your new home. Think of me when you have a cup of tea – it’d be far more than a fair trade.”

He had no idea why he’d gone and said it, as it was overly sentimental and not at all professional. But Prompto didn’t seem to mind. “I’ll already be thinking of you whenever I have a cup of tea,” he murmured, taking a tentative sip of the hot liquid. The taste of ginger and lemongrass seemed to spread all the way inside him, given by the increasingly flushed look on his face, and Ignis smiled. 

Prompto wasn’t saying no to the offer, Ignis noted. In fact, he was holding onto his mug rather tightly and protectively, carrying it with him as Ignis showed him around the apartment. He took measured sips at regular intervals, and Ignis wondered if he had calculated his intake so that he finished his drink by the time they completed the tour and returned to the kitchen counter. There, he followed Ignis’ lead and put the mug down, then looked at them. “Should I wash them?”

Ignis weighted the pro and cons between having Prompto perform a menial task for him, and the empowerment it would bring the android to take care of his own possession. In the end he nodded and showed Prompto how, demonstrating how to scrape the used leaves into the compost bin, how to use the soft brush to scour the inside of the mugs lightly to get rid of the tea marks but not scratch the enamel. Prompto watched it all and repeated the routine on his own mug. When he was done, he placed the mug on the drying rack with nothing short of reverence. He shot Ignis a glance, and the smile that Ignis returned was tired but fond.

“Excuse me,” Ignis said after having given in to a yawn. After that warm drink his entire body was shutting down fast, the adrenaline ebbing from his bloodstream like a tide, leaving his limbs heavy and his eyelids drooping. All the tension he’d been holding right under his skin drained out along with what was left of his energy, and he couldn’t hold back another yawn big enough to make his jaw crack. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to go to bed,” he told Prompto, and marveled at the fact that he felt no qualms in going to sleep locked in the same space as his would-be assassin. “You can take a look around the place, see what keeps you entertained. I wouldn’t recommend connecting to the Internet, just in case your employer can track you down, but I do have plenty of books that can keep you busy for a while – if you read them the traditional way.”

He ran a hand through his hair, messing it all up from its carefully styled state. Prompto was marching over to the bookshelf, but he had turned around to stare at Ignis quite alarmed, as if he couldn’t tell who Ignis was without the hair spikes. Ignis tried not to read too much into it. “You can have the couch, or the guest bedroom,” he continued. “Make yourself comfortable.”

Prompto seemed to search in his limited database for something to say but came up short. Ignis wouldn’t blame him. What kind of database could prepare you for this kind of situation? In the end Prompto settled for a safe “Thank you,” and then, “Goodnight.”

It hit him like a truck, but Ignis didn’t allow himself to think too long on the fact that this was the first time in forever that he’d had someone to tell him goodnight. He was also ruthlessly commanding himself not to get used to it, as it wouldn’t be anything permanent. If things went as planned – and they _should_, because it was what Ignis had promised Prompto – then by tomorrow night, Prompto would be gone. Out of Ignis’ life, leaving behind only an empty space in Ignis’ drawer where two mugs used to fit. 

He blamed his exhaustion for how sentimental these thoughts were.

“Goodnight, Prompto,” he said eventually and beat a hasty retreat to his bedroom.


	2. Chapter 2

Most of the people in their acquaintance seemed to think that Luna and Ravus’ life was charmed. Ravus never bothered to correct them, though he maintained that they were idiots who had seen too many period dramas. What part of ‘being from an old and respectable family’ held any appeal, except from the fact that hopefully, one day, they would run out of conservative relatives to suffer the rants and complaints of? As for their titles, neither Luna nor Ravus had made anyone call them lady or lord for a single second in their lives. If anything, they’d only worked harder in law school so that they could earn another title of their own, one that they could be proud about. 

Their name however, Ravus had to admit, had a nice look and ring to it. It cut a smart figure inscribed in silver letters upon the glass of their office doors. The day they had moved the firm into this building and had the offices decorated, the two of them had snuck past security to stay after hours. They didn’t do anything crazy, just sat on the carpet in Luna’s office and toasted each other with cheap champagne over the makeshift picnic she had packed, gazing at the blinking lights of the city below. Ravus remembered very well the giddiness he’d felt then, a feeling like the rising bubbles in the champagne flute, carrying them to the top of the world. They had that name up in 30-inch letters at the reception desk also, but the display wasn’t about the family. It was all about the two of them, their law practice, the business they led, and the values that they upheld. 

Ravus’ perfect day, he thought, was perfectly simple and reasonable. His gray suit would not have creases before he even made it to his desk in the morning. His client would not have the unquenchable desire to eat Italian food and be an utter menace to his white shirt. At the end of it all, he would have time to massage his arm and allow it to rest, so that the next morning he wouldn’t have to wrestle his prosthetic over a swollen stump. Most importantly, his sister would be happy – and the success of the law firm played an increasingly central part in that. 

Ravus liked to take in the ambiance of the office every morning. Upon arrival, he made a round of the office floor, greeting even the newest intern and making sure nobody was cloistered away in their cubicle. This was a bit like preening he supposed, but he thought he deserved this small vanity – the satisfaction of seeing their well-oiled machine of a thriving firm, the gratification of seeing people being good at their jobs and business being ran right.

Alas, the signs this morning were less than auspicious.

Gentiana was not at the reception counter, which was already tripping a dozen mental alarms in Ravus’ head. Usually their head secretary was content to play the role of commander from her desk, so for her to leave her post meant that something had gone horribly wrong. In her place, there was the poor intern – Iris, Ravus recalled. She was cradling the phone to her ear, speaking to who could only be their dry cleaners, as she was apologizing for a tuxedo that they would be returning late. 

The hall seemed more packed with people that usual, associates cluttering in bunches of threes and fours, whispering and shifty-eyed. There were a lot of outraged eyebrow movements. When Ravus bumped into one of those groups, they scattered too quickly for him to catch their conversation. Unwelcomed, he walked along, feeling increasingly perplexed as he could feel their eyes bearing holes into his back. And yet when he turned his head, the associates would already have their heads down in their computer screens, pretending to be excessively absorbed by the work they were doing. 

In front of Ravus, the door of one of the meeting rooms crashed open, and out dashed Aranea. She had her phone plastered to her ear, her no-nonsense derbies striking an urgent rhythm against the polished granite. She grabbed Ravus’ arm and pulled him along with no further explanation. She hardly needed to, as she could tow him along as airily as if he was wearing roller skates, and there was nothing he could do to protest. To end this dramatic abduction, she shoved him into the meeting room, slipped in after him, and closed the door with a bang behind her. 

Gentiana was there, along with Luna. With Aranea and Ravus arriving, they had the firm’s most important people, its heart and brain all gathered in one place. The center of all their attention, it seemed, was the laptop in the middle of the desk. When Aranea put down her phone on the sensor on the desk, the call was patched through and Ravus was faced with the person responsible for the chaos and the impromptu meeting.

That person was none other than the world’s most straight-laced troublemaker, their very own Ignis Scientia. 

The call reconnected with an unholy screech. It took a moment for the noise to sort itself out – and even then there were crackling noises, as if the connection had been permanently damaged. The image didn’t fare any better either, as it was beyond pixelated, the screen blotched with black. There were stains on Ignis’ face that Ravus truly hoped were imperfections in the transmission, and not what they looked like – bloodstains. 

“What’s all this about?” He asked, anxiously. He knew fully how foolish it sounded but it summed up his feelings pretty well. On the screen, Ignis jolted and winced. It was that reaction that sent a burst of cold sweat down Ravus’ back despite the perfectly conditioned air, and he thought he felt something akin to despair. 

Oh, yes. Ravus’ simple, perfect day was quite simply a lost cause. 

“Dear colleagues,” Aranea was saying, in her tartest voice, glancing around her audience emphatically and definitely not missing Ignis’ reactions. “We are gathered here today because this guy—” she pointed at the screen, “—claims to be Ignis. Ignis Stupeo Scientia, to be perfectly clear. And he’s asking for—” she paused for dramatic effect, “—a _day off_.”

“I’d like to point out for the records,” chimed in Gentiana, “that this would be the same Ignis Scientia whom, ever since he first arrived at this firm, had been ignoring every command from his superiors to take his days off before they expire. And now he’s trying to take a day off in the middle of—” She paused, as if consulting an inner agenda, and started rattling out, “—a merger, a class action suit against unlawful evictions of androids, and a civil suit for property damages. Among other cases he is supposed to prepare for or supervise.” Her expression didn’t change, and it might well be Ravus’ imagination, but he thought he saw a flash of amusement in her eyes. “Not to mention, he hasn’t even attempted to return the rented tuxedo in time, therefore violating company policy. Are you saying Ignis Scientia would do this?”

“Who are you,” Ravus blurted out, “and what have you done with Ignis?”

“Alright, everyone,” Luna spoke up, in a light but firm tone. “I think we’ve more than made our point. Ignis,” she continued, looking at the screen as Gentiana and Aranea stepped back to give her the space. She was leaning forward with her hands gripping the edge of the conference table, and her attitude was one of pure ‘taking charge’ that never failed to fill Ravus with pride. “What happened?” She narrowed her eyes, choosing her next question with the accuracy and decisiveness of a spear fisherman picking out his target in a stream. “Did something happen at last night’s function?”

“No,” Ignis said, and revised, “Or… maybe, yes? Something came up, but I handled it. Or, I thought I’d handled it, until this morning—”

“Tell me,” Luna commanded. What she meant, they all knew, was ‘Spit it out.’ “I need to know what happened and how bad it is, if I’m to get it under control, Ignis.” 

A bit of a pause went on, where Ignis somehow to appear even more pained. When he spoke, it was like pulling teeth. “I might have—there’s a small chance that I’ve killed an android.”

*

Everyone, apparently, had at least one moment in their life where they looked around them and wondered where they had gone wrong. Ignis had thought that he was immune to such useless, unproductive sentiment. He believed strongly that every problem came with its own solution, and the only limit to a person’s control over their fate was what they were willing to do.

He’d never considered a scenario where he would not, in fact, be willing to do anything. 

All he could think to do, after getting off the phone with Luna and receiving very clear, very straightforward instructions from her, was to sit on his bed and stare at the ruins that he had made of Prompto, and wonder: Where, exactly, had he gone wrong?

Anyone would’ve pointed out that inviting an assassin into your home and going to sleep with him on the loose was the first mistake. But Ignis had been so sure of his gut feelings. While he had not felt completely secure, he had at least been reasonably certain that there was no considerable danger. Prompto had acted completely in control of himself over the evening, his fears and hopes bare to see. Ignis had counted on the null sphere to keep him safe from outside interference until they could get him insulated from that kind of coercion. But that was also a mistake. Ignis never should have trusted a tool that the enemy had handed over to him. 

_Something_ had happened in the night. The null sphere might have failed, or it might have expired on a timer. It could be Prompto, curious and desperate for entertainment, defying Ignis’ advice to connect to the Internet. It could be another failsafe from Prompto’s employer. Ignis had no way of knowing. 

The only thing Ignis did know was that, in the night, exhausted as he was, he’d woken to a presence beside his bed. The room was dark, but the light filtering in from outside was more than enough to illuminate Prompto’s features, and they were ghastlier than those of any monster the mind could conjure. Prompto’s face was locked in an unnatural grimace, and it was disconcerting to see that truly dead look on a face that Ignis knew could be so expressive even as its owner tried to remain impassive. 

The most telltale sign was in his eyes, which were no longer the color of forget-me-nots. In the dark, the red glow of Prompto’s eyes was garish, the light piercing his thin eyelids and pearling at the tips of his pale lashes. That bead of light was reflected on a blade that had grown out of Prompto’s wrist, and sliding along the hair’s width edge, as the android raised it over his head to strike at Ignis’ heart. 

There had been no last-minute recognition, no frantic swerving attempt to preserve the life of a friend. The hit had been true and strong, and the only thing that saved Ignis’ life was his own quick reflexes. In a surge of recklessness that Prompto’s electronic brain had failed to account for, Ignis brought his hands up and grabbed the blade, refusing to let go even as Prompto shook the weapon violently, trying to free it for another blow. Ignis, aware that only his ability to hold on would give him a fighting chance, wrestled for control, forcing Prompto’s arm back. Slowly but surely, he managed to inch his body into position, coiling like a spring and ready to lash out. 

His nerves were on fire, his power of perception entirely focused on watching Prompto’s body and predicting his next moves. The only thing Ignis hadn’t felt then was the cuts on his palms, as the wicked sharp blade dug in even deeper, almost to the bones.

As if to make up for that small mercy, his hands burned now, even after Ignis had smeared two entire tube of medi-gel on them. Idly, he thanked his past self for having the sense to stock up the emergency kit just in case. He should still see a doctor, but the gel had stopped the bleeding and formed a kind of padding over the wounds. With the sealant in place, Ignis was allowed some movement to take care of what needed to be done.

If only he could make his body want to move, instead of just sit there and look.

Prompto lay where he’d fallen on the bed, immobile. His hair fanned out in a golden halo on the pillow; red, arched splashes of blood joined in to complete the frame around his form. One of his arms rested serenely across his belly; the other had fallen to the side, still split open at the wrist to reveal the blade, resting flush in the middle of a cushion like some sort of offering. There was something heart-achingly vulnerable and touching about his awkwardly splayed slender form, like a fledgling fallen dead on the sidewalk after a stormy afternoon. And yet, his face was still frozen in that dreadful death mask. 

Ignis wondered, absently, if Prompto was still conscious inside his body but unable to move, like how Ignis was apparently prisoner to his own mind. 

One thing that Noctis had repeated over and over, when he’d handed Ignis the EMP, was that its effects were unpredictable. It could shut off all of an android’s mind, or only parts of it. It could damage memory – short or long term, depending on the android’s OS and how up to date it was. If the programming wasn’t done properly, an EMP surge might take out even basic functions, such as an android’s ability to convert electricity to power – a function as base as a human’s ability to breathe. 

For all this, Noctis had warned Ignis to use the EMP only in cases of absolute necessity. For all this, Ignis had been carrying this device on him every time he might have to come into contact with a violent or unstable android but had never resorted to using it. He’d had it at the fundraiser, but the thought had not even crossed his mind to use it – the risk to all the androids present was too great. He’d placed it under his pillow last night – as his plan B, just in case he had troubles with Prompto – and yet, as the worst-case scenario happened, even at the very moment that Prompto’s knife was bearing down on him, he still found himself reluctant to flip the switch. 

Ignis looked around his bedroom. Absurdly, what he felt was the relief that he didn’t own that much furniture, so there wasn’t much to be ruined by the blood. There was a great deal of it in splashes and streaks, marking Ignis’ path to the first aid kit. A handprint on the edge of his desk was of perfect quality and would have thrilled a forensic tech, had this been a crime scene. The whole thing looked ridiculously contrived and arranged, as if it was just a set for a lurid theatrical play, and not the site where two people had actually fought for their lives.

Despite the burning pain in his hands, Ignis had managed to push the blade back. Not far, but it was enough room to maneuver. The moment he felt enough space around his body, he drew up his legs and managed one vicious kick to Prompto’s stomach, breaking his hold and sending him tumbling back. Prompto wasn’t winded – _he doesn’t even breathe_, Ignis had thought in one terrifying moment – but his balance was still badly skewed, and he had to do a full roll, barely gripping at the edge of the bed to prevent himself from falling over like a comedy relief character in a funny skit. The movements sprayed the blood from his blade and from where it had dripped and pooled in the paneling of his arm, drops of red speckling Ignis’ face. And yet, that red wasn’t nearly enough to pull Ignis’ attention from the red that had invaded Prompto’s eyes.

“Prompto,” Ignis had said. Even as he tried, he’d known it was pointless. There was no recognition in Prompto’s mechanical eyes. They were just sensors now, just camera lenses widening-closing-focusing-aiming for prey. His blade was poised for another attack, and Ignis knew that no flesh and bone was about to stop that for a second time. 

It was hard to tell what the prickling in his eyes had been, when he’d lunged for the EMP device under his pillow just as Prompto lunged to strike at him. It could’ve been more blood, it could’ve been sweat –Ignis realized only now that he was drenched in it. 

And, amazingly, it could’ve been tears. 

Ignis would never have thought himself so sentimental, so indulgent as to do something as impractical as _crying_ at such a crucial moment. In this situation, literally anything else he could do would’ve been better. But just thinking these thoughts while looking at Prompto’s face, he felt his own face heat with shame and anger and his nose and eyes stung anew, so there really hadn’t been any chance of stopping the tears. As his hand moved over the switch, the effect was instantaneous. As Ignis watched Prompto go down – locking up in that horrifying grimace and slowly tipping backward, a new, horrifying thought popped unbidden into his head. 

He wondered if _this_ – this empty, motionless, devastated dead _thing_ was Prompto’s real face, and the one capable of sweetness, joy, curiosity, and grief had been the mask after all. 

Perhaps the entire distressed android story had only been a scam, tailored for Ignis to trick him into taking Prompto into his home. Once the infiltration was complete, the sham was discarded to make way for the execution. And Ignis, naïve Ignis, confident Ignis, pathetically _lonely_ Ignis – with a messiah complex after all, and such a starvation for connection – Ignis who, really, should have known better, had stepped right into the trap and swallowed the bait whole. 

*

The palm scanner almost threw a hissy fit when it couldn’t detect Ignis’ hand print under all the medi-gel. For someone trying to get out of his own parking lot without a fuss, it was terribly inconvenient. Still, he managed it somehow, driving through the gate then speeding right past the barrier, foregoing the whole ritual of waving to the security agent. He zoomed away too fast to make out any commotion he’d left behind, and it was hard for Ignis to tell if the sirens and alarms he was hearing were real or only part of his imagination. 

He didn’t stop to think. Lunafreya would have put everything to right in the time he was gone, and if not, well. The building management could wait until Ignis got back.

Even with his tinted windows and among the unanimous streams of vehicles on the highway, Ignis still felt terribly exposed. He tried his best to keep his eyes on the road, but there was no stopping himself from glancing over to the passenger’s seat from time to time. Only last night, Prompto had sat there, clutching his camera with a fearful, tentative, but palpable hope conveyed through every line and fiber of his body. There had been a light in his eyes then and now, not only it was gone, Ignis even had to ask himself whether it hadn’t been only a product of his wistful thinking. 

Prompto slumped in the seat, head lolling to the side, eyes wide open and unseeing. They were grey now, bleached of their distinctive shade, as a personal offense to mock Ignis. _This is what had come of your sentiments_, they were telling him. _This is your ruination_. Prompto’s clothes – the generic black suit that he had been wearing last night – was speckled with blood. A bandage was wrapped tightly around his wrist, though it was not to contain any injury. Ignis had only needed something to hold the paneling of his arm together and keep the hidden blade sheathed, and the bandage had been the first thing within reach. 

Ignis had buckled Prompto in with the seat belt, to prevent him from flopping around with the movements of the vehicle (It would’ve been a sight that he wouldn’t be able to stomach.) But he needn’t have worried. Prompto’s neck was stiff and his head barely lolled at all during the ride. All his joints seemed to have locked in place. It had been a task and a half to wrestle him from the bedroom to the elevator then into the car. Ignis hadn’t noticed it at the moment, thinking he had been struggling because he was reeling from shock, adrenaline withdrawal, and blood loss. Now, it was clear that the task was so hard because Ignis had been dragging along a jointless mannequin that was about as responsive as a piece of furniture.

He wiped all these thoughts from him. He had already let sentiments ruin him once, would he do it again so soon? It was a disservice to Prompto – to the Prompto he had gotten to know, whether he was real or not – to write him off so easily, especially since it was Ignis who had failed him so spectacularly. But surely the worst had already happened, and it could only be uphill from here. Though Ignis was not sure of the damage he’d been forced to inflict on Prompto, there was only one person who might answer his questions.

The headquarters of LUCIS Corp. sprawled over the horizon. It was no hyperbole – to enter LUCIS was like entering a city unto itself, as the sprawling campus just stretched on forever to accommodate the thousands of workers who worked and lived here. Ignis was heading for the center of it – the area affectionately named ‘Insomnia’ on account of the countless sleepless hours that its residents had spent programming, researching, and, yes, partying. 

Since the moment he drove in, even in his state of shock, Ignis couldn’t help but feel the incredible energy unfurling and sweeping all around him. Men and women zipped past, purposeful, striding along or rolling past on every kind of locomotion imaginable to man. The traffic was like that of a city – a particularly busy, bustling one at that – but Ignis breezed through the traffic, security checks, and lines. In fact, from the moment he drove into LUCIS property, the screen on his car’s dashboard lit up, the standard GPS replaced by an interactive map optimizing his trip into Insomnia. Security barriers lifted for him, and it seemed like every red light turned green on his behalf. GLAIVEs parted way to let him pass, looking bored, but Ignis felt their sensors on him, following his progress and narrowing his coordinates down to the exact square inches of tarmac that the tires of his car were resting on. 

The Citadel itself was an imposing building of black glass and granite so polished it took on the blue gleam of the sky reflected upon it. It was all straight lines and sharp angles, a streamlined design devoid of embellishment except for the gold trims on the edges and corners. It made the building look like a crown of black jewels, and Ignis knew exactly just whom the crown was meant for.

_(More sentiments. Really?)_

The first time Ignis had come here on a personal invitation, the experience had been slightly… disorienting. Following the instructions of the interactive map, it had seemed as if he was to drive right through the steps and into the front door of the Citadel. Ignis had still been in the middle of looking for a place to do a U-turn and try again when, like magic, the granite had flaked open, and the real heart of the Citadel was revealed to him. 

His welcome wasn’t any less spectacular this time. The steps leading into the building folded back; what had seemed to the naked eye like solid carved black granite fluidly flowing apart like tiny scales. The opening revealed a smooth driveway of black chrome, sloping downward into what seemed like an incredibly deep abyss. The driveway, though polished to a shine, was not at all slippery, as some incredibly well calculated trick electrostatic was at work to hold the car right where it was supposed to be as it was conveyed down to the bottom of the basement. Above head, the steps flowed and folded back into place. The day light from the opening was replaced with a soft white light from the spots cleverly woven all along the supporting structure. 

There was no need to maneuver the car into park, even. The moment Ignis rolled onto the designated spot (lined with flashing lights not unlike an airport runway, or more whimsically, like the lights around the dressing room mirror of a Hollywood star – Ignis had never been able to convince Noctis to tell him which one actually inspired him for this setting), that segment of the floor rotated to get his car in place. 

The entire experience lasted only a minute. There was nothing left for Ignis to do, so he climbed out of the car and stood in silence until shuffling footsteps alerted him of Noctis’ arrival. 

“Geez, Specs,” Noctis said, in that airy, carefree voice that made Ignis felt immediately lighter, as if all his problems would go away as long as he had Noctis on his side. “I thought it was bad form to only visit someone when you’re in deep shit?”

“I see you’ve spent some time polishing up your vocabulary,” Ignis returned primly. At the same time, he let himself sag. Everything that had allowed him to function up to this point drained away from him. He leaned heavily against the side of his car, glancing up to smile weakly at the man. “You are a sight for sore eyes, Noctis.”

Noctis raised an eyebrow at him. Despite his shock and exhaustion and… who knows what else, it was not the time to unpack all of that – Ignis couldn’t help a smile. 

Noctis was _not_ a good sight, not at all. Not by a long stretch.

Noctis shuffled a little more into the garage area, but no further, not even to offer Ignis a helping hand. Ignis knew better than to criticize his manners though. The light pouring in from the lab behind Noctis threw into stark contrast a halo of crystalline cords and cables all radiating from the data port at the back of his neck. The cables were transparent but for droplets of luminescent lights racing up and down their lengths (Ignis had more than once asked Noctis whether the lights served any purpose other than purely cosmetics but had never gotten a straight answer.) Noctis’ hair was a _mess_, as he never bothered to smooth them down after plugging the cables in. His eyes glowed in strange patterns – dim blue at one moment, almost undistinguishable from human eyes, only to flare into a fierce pink that lit up the inside of his skull and throwing every detail into stark, almost morbid, relief. 

Ignis had spoken to LUCIS employees, who were some of the most open-minded human beings in the entire world, and still most of them found Noctis unsettling. Ignis could see the reason. Though Noctis didn’t intend, and likely wasn’t aware of any of it, he still acted in an unnatural mix of human and inhuman behaviors. For instance, like all androids of his model, he could connect to the Internet wirelessly, but preferred to spend most of his time physically plugged into the Crystal with these unwieldy clusters of optic fibers, sacrificing mobility for data processing speed and bandwidth. On the other hand, even if he was fully capable of regulating his body temperature like any self-respecting androids, he opted for a simpler and more rustic solution to the coolant-infested ambiance of the server room – a blanket. 

It was this blanket that Noctis was pulling more tightly around himself to keep it from falling down, as he waited patiently for Ignis to shake himself from his stupor and straighten up. Once Ignis did, Noctis was already turning away, shuffling back into his lab on giant, fluffy, tuna-shaped slippers. “Take your problem with you when you come in. Or tell me if you need to borrow a hand cart.”

“That would be unnecessary, thank you,” Ignis commented. He did, however, took a moment to peel off the excess sealant gel from his palms, gazing at the streaks and droplets of his blood that had become encased in the transparent silicone. His cuts were more or less glued together underneath, not healed, but at least Ignis could function without being leaky. Gingerly he pulled open the door on the passenger’s side, ducked in to unbuckle Prompto’s seatbelt, and struggled again to pull him out.

When he carried Prompto into Noctis’ lab – in a fireman’s carry, so he didn’t have to face him and his dead eyes – he saw that Noctis had a giant bean bag ready. Ignis was relieved. He’d been expecting – and dreading – something like a dentist’ chair, but of course this was more Noctis. Carefully he laid Prompto down, rearranging his limbs the best he could so he was comfortable (_Not that he could feel it_, his mind viciously supplied.) 

Noctis immediately bustled over, trailing twice as many cables and cords as usual, carrying a helmet with about a thousand wires protruding from it, which he plopped over Prompto’s head. The cables lit up when Noctis touched a sensor, and all the lights started to travel upwards towards the Crystal, where the super computer was embedded into the ceiling of Noctis’ basement. From all the way up there, it looked smaller than it really was, but was still an otherworldly sight with pulsing blue lights amidst the constantly stirring coolant mist, the hum of the hundreds tiny fans regulating its inside temperature sounding at times almost like murmurs. 

“Alright, what exactly happened?” Noctis asked, pulling up holo displays and screens all around him. His blanket had fallen on the floor at his feet, but he scarcely seemed to realize it. Ignis stepped out of the way when a slender thread of a green light scurried across the floor over to Prompto to scan him from top to bottom. As Noctis focused, he drew even more light to him, the illumination intensifying as his fingers continued to fly across the keyboards. 

It was obvious that Noctis wasn’t waiting for Ignis’ explanation of Prompto’s state. Ignis suspected that with one look Noctis could tell more about Prompto’s past and present wounds than what Ignis had managed to coax out of the android last night. So, he started the story with the fundraiser and continued with all that had transpired after. Lost in his reminiscence, Ignis only realized half-way through that he was feeling more than a little bitter, picking over all of his mistakes. He just hoped that he hadn’t made it so obvious in his voice. 

“Well, that Null sphere was legit, at least,” said Noctis carelessly, pulling up the specs of the device in question. He idly examined it, while his hands still flew around the holo keyboards. Ignis wasn’t sure why he needed to type at all, as texts would appear unprompted on screens on all sides, and Noctis seemed to need only to blink for them to turn into programs and calculations, carrying out his will like extensions of his being. 

“It seemed to work well enough when we were at the fundraiser,” Ignis confirmed. “But then at midnight, he just—changed.” There didn’t seem to be any other word he could use to describe Prompto’s last minute change of heart. “I wonder—I suspect it could be his plans all along. To give me a sad story about wanting to get away from his employer—” Even as he said it, Ignis realized he was wrong. Prompto hadn’t even said that, had he? Ignis, in his negotiations, had handed him the play script like an idiot. He might as well have fed the details to Prompto with a spoon, it was so easy. Reeling in another sudden surge of acrimony, it took him a minute to pick up the thread of his own sentence. “Then he only had to wait to be inside my home so he could carry out his mission more easily.”

Noctis had been quiet as Ignis spoke, offering only grunts and non-committal signals along the way. But now he spoke up quite clearly. “What if he had?” he asked, and for the first time since he’d arrived, Ignis felt the full force of Noctis’ attention, all of that processing power aimed at him. “What if he _had_ staged all of this to trick you? Would you still have taken him home? Would you still have me fix him up?”

Ignis stared at Noctis and was suddenly reminded of why it was so easy to confess to Noctis even his most secret thoughts. Thoughts that he would be too ashamed to even admit to himself, and yet he didn’t even hesitate to lay bare to Noctis so the android could pick at, analyze, and even judge. It was not just because Noctis mostly lived in a basement and wasn’t likely to gossip with anyone Ignis knew (though, it may only be an impression that Noctis encouraged.) But more importantly, there was a kind of pure and innocent simplicity to Noctis’ reasoning that never failed to straighten out the impossible tangles that came with Ignis’ tendency to turn even simplest problems over in his mind until they spun out of proportions. 

Right now, even as Ignis was considering the answer to Noctis’ question, he felt all the inner voices that were berating him, calling him sentimental, arrogant, careless, pathetic, all the voices that were asking him _what if? What if?_ went quiet. He looked at Noctis and blinked, like a man waking from a bad dream, and he slowly said, “I suppose… I would.” He felt the words speak themselves into existence, cementing the belief. “Even if I thought he was lying to me, and I didn’t… I suppose I still would have done exactly the same. It didn’t matter what _he_ was planning. It mattered far more to me that _I_ could hear of someone needing help and didn’t act on it. So yes. I would have taken him with me if there was even a chance in a million of helping him.”

“Even if you might die?” Noctis’ voice was slightly amused, and Ignis leveled at him a look. 

“Yes. That was a risk I was willing to take. I’m sure you’re already aware of this, but it comes with my occupation, even. I used to think Lunafreya was overly cautious, but… I believe her now. I seem to have made my career a very dangerous one.”

“Yeah?” Noctis returned, looking almost bored. But he shuffled over sideway – trying not to disturb all his cables and holo displays – and reached out. Ignis guessed Noctis had been reaching for his hand, until he saw the awkward angle that Ignis was holding them and remembered the wounds there. So he fumbled for a moment, and moved his hand up to Ignis’ arm, squeezing it. There was warmth in that simple gesture, and the light in Noctis’ eyes when he gazed up at Ignis was full of fond exasperation. “Then why are you beating yourself up so bad?”

Ignis ducked his head as he tried a weak smile. His chest felt suddenly full where it had felt like a hollow log just moments ago, Noctis’ words reaching to and touching that small hopeful part of Ignis that had hidden away and curled up in fear since the assault. “I—” he swallowed, finding his mouth dry and bitter. “I’m afraid that I—liked him too much.” It was a relief to say it, and his words overflowed after breaking that first floodgate into incoherent streams that Ignis would’ve been ashamed to let anyone else hear. “It made me subjective and sentimental, and sentiments made me useless.” He hung his head and looked down to see that he’d started to clench his fists and made himself loosen them. “Somehow, I’ve gotten too close to him. I felt too much for him and now I’ve hurt him.” Each admission of his failure felt like the stroke of an axe against his very self. “I’ve failed him.” 

“You’ve done your best to save him,” Noctis retorted. He’d stopped squeezing Ignis’ arm, instead stroking it up and down uncertainly, like he wanted to calm down a spooked animal but was still not sure about it. “Is it a crime to save your own damn life? Come on, man. You’re too smart to beat yourself up over what could have happened.”

“Thank you,” Ignis inclined his head. He moved a hand to wipe at his eyes. Now that he’d gotten all of that out, he felt a little more like himself. “My good intentions would amount to nothing, however, if I’ve damaged him beyond salvaging with the EMP. I know what is at stake, Noct, you’ve told me often enough. Now would you put me out of my misery and tell me if you can restore him or not?” 

“Restore him?” Noctis’ brows pulled together in confusion, and Ignis felt a chill run down his spine. Had he misunderstood Noctis’ optimism somehow? Had Noctis only tried to cheer him up as a way to soften the blow of the bad news? A thousand bad scenarios raced through his mind before Noctis’ eyes widened and the android exclaimed, “Oh, you mean wake him up! I’ve already done that! It’s done! Easy peasy!”

“What?” 

In disbelief, Ignis had to stare at Noctis for a moment before remembering that he would receive an answer to his question much faster if he took a look elsewhere. Still, he couldn’t help but give Noctis one last reproachful frown before whipping his head around, searching the room for Prompto. 

He needn’t have looked that far. 

Ignis didn’t know why he’d thought Prompto had moved. But he was still sitting where Ignis had left him, with the helmet now cradled in his lap, fiddling with the wires until Noctis came over and swatted his hand away. Without the oversized helmet obscuring his features, it was more than clear that Ignis’ nightmare vision from earlier – the expressionless face, the grey dead eyes – had totally vanished. Prompto sat, his back ram-rod straight (which was not an easy feat considering how squishy the bean bag was), looking sheepish and profoundly uncomfortable, as if it was a task of tremendous mental fortitude for him to keep on sitting there instead of bolting right out of the door. He glanced up, met Ignis’ eyes, and flinched – then immediately dropped his gaze to his lap, fingers picking at the hem of his shirt so hard that, Ignis saw, the flimsy sewing was starting to unravel. 

Ignis’ mouth was suddenly very dry and bitter once again. “Noctis,” he started slowly. “Would you mind giving us a moment to talk in private?”

“Yeah,” replied Noctis. Ignis only nodded absently, until what Noctis had said actually parsed through. He glanced over in surprise, to which Noctis just snorted. “Yeah, I mind. This is my damn lab. If you wanna have a heart-to-heart, do it outside.” When both of them failed to react, Noctis snapped his fingers with a half-amused, half-exasperated expression. “Go on! Don’t make me take off my cables! I’ll be right in here if there’s any problem, and really, there is not, because I fixed it. Now it’s your turn to fix things from your end.” He flipped a switch here, rotated a holo display there, and there was the sound of machinery operating from deep within the earth until a doorway opened in the seemingly solid rock wall of the basement. Noctis gestured to it. “Don’t let me see you until you’ve kissed and made up.”

Ignis barely had the time – or the presence of mind, really – to form a protest. The two of them were hypnotized by Noctis so completely that they just went where the man pointed them to. Ignis didn’t know how the tunnel worked, how it was even physically possible, but it was as efficient as if Noctis had put them onto a conveyor belt. Within ten minutes they were standing in the open – in the inner courtyard of the Citadel, surrounded by black granite and flowers, and nobody to look in on them except for the sparrows that peeped and fluttered from branch to branch in the cherry tree that had lost the last of its petals and was preparing to bear fruits.

The stunned silence went on for another moment, and Ignis use this lapse to take stock of the two of them. Prompto, with his hair wild, his clothing in disarray, his arm completely covered by bandages and still cupped around his middle as if still cradling the helmet, as if he hadn’t notice it had been taken away from him. Ignis himself was not a much better sight. His hands throbbed, and he was sure he looked about as shaken and beat up as he felt, if not more. He’d gone from one kind of shock to another, and as of right now he was slightly too bewildered to even blame himself for what had happened. 

In the end, he let out a little laugh. “That Noctis—he is something else. Isn’t he?”

His words seemed to break the spell. Prompto was startled into forgetting to avoid Ignis’ eyes, and once he met Ignis’ gaze, he managed a tentative smile himself. His eyes were troubled, and in so much daylight they looked more blue than violet. “I’m sorry,” he started, fumbling to get the words out before he lost courage (Ignis could relate to the feeling.) “I was awake earlier, but Noctis spoke to me in my mind, and, and told me not to say anything just yet, to hear you out. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, honest!”

“It’s quite alright,” Ignis replied honestly. “I know it’s not your fault, Prompto.” After all, all evidences pointed to the fact that Noctis was an absolute menace. He allowed his eyes to drift over Prompto’s form then. “Are you—really alright? The EMP surge had not caused any lasting damages, had it?”

“No,” Prompto said quickly, shaking his head. “Um,” he paused, pointing to a bench and glancing to Ignis questioningly. Gratefully, Ignis went, and Prompto sat down next to him once he was settled. “It just knocked me out, that’s all. I still have all my memory up to—” Here he stopped and picked at his hem again, “—up to the last moment.”

“What happened, Prompto?” Ignis asked, because of course Noctis had not answered that question. He wasn’t sure if it was a kindness, to make sure Prompto got a chance to tell his story, or if he was just being infuriating. Either case, he very much kept Ignis hanging, and even if Ignis had already decided he would’ve helped Prompto no matter what, he still would just like to know. “Did you—Did you plan for that to happen, or—”

“No!” Prompto exclaimed the same word, but this time he sounded almost fierce. He had leaned forward, his eyes so close to Ignis’, his hand hovering as if he wanted to reach in and uproot the very thought from Ignis’ brain. When he realized how far he had leaned in, Prompto let out a squeak and pulled back sharply. When he’d saved himself from falling off the bench, he let out a deprecating laugh as he cradled his arm – the one with the blade hidden within it – to his chest. “To be honest, I’m too stupid to pull something like that. I was just following orders – first my employer’s, and then yours, I suppose. I know you weren’t giving me any orders, but in my head, you were. It was easier to think that way, to think that was all I had to do, you know? It’s something that you need when you’ve spent as much time as I have needing one kind of order or another.”

“Alright,” Ignis replied slowly, trying to absorb all that Prompto was revealing to him. It didn’t answer the question, however. “Then… how did that happen?”

Prompto’s enthusiasm wilted a little to be replaced with guilt. “I… was being stupid. Nothing new there, right?” His forced laughter was almost pitiful, and definitely not enough to derail Ignis from the conversation. He leveled a stern look at Prompto to let him know this. Amazingly, Prompto blushed, and the embarrassed, nervous titter he let out next was genuine. “Sorry. I just thought… if I reported back to my employer, if I told him I’d failed, he might not want me anymore. Or, or I could make him a deal to call off this thing on you, or I can outsmart him into revealing himself or something—I don’t know.” There must have been a look on Ignis’ face, because even as Ignis drew a breath to speak Prompto was already speaking over him. “I know, I know, there’s no need to tell me how stupid that was. The moment I connected to the Internet he grabbed me, and—” 

Prompto closed his eyes, and his shoulders shook. His hand came up, jerkily unrolling his sleeve, nervously tugging it down so it covered his split forearm, hiding away the seam, the weapon and shame within. “It’s alright,” Ignis was saying. “You don’t have to talk about it.” But Prompto was talking over him again.

“I didn’t know what happened at the time, he blocked me out of my body. But all my sensors—all the recording still worked, and—Just now, when I woke up. I watched it. I saw it all.” He looked up at Ignis, holding his gaze with eyes so dark they reflected the light in a way that made them seem wet with tears. “Ignis I—” His voice shook and distorted so bad that he had to try again. “You welcomed me into your home and asked for nothing in return, and still I went and messed it up. If you—If you want me to go, I’ll go. I have enough skills to survive and to stay out of my employer’s hands now. I won’t make that mistake again, I’ll ask Noctis to proof me, I’ll ask him to install a failsafe, a self-destruct, something. I won’t be a danger to anyone, and nobody can use me to hurt you, ever again.”

“Prompto,” Ignis raised his voice. “Prompto—” Prompto was still babbling on, fingers gripping into his own arm so hard Ignis was worried he’d snap it. While he understood why Prompto would want that weapon – yet another sign that he was his employer’s tool – out from under his skin, Ignis was sure there had to be a better way about that than to just rip it all out. When voice turned out to be not enough, Ignis had to reach out and grab Prompto’s hand – forgetting his own slashed palms for a moment and paying for it immediately after. He winced, and that made Prompto freeze. The blond just sat deadly still, even his shaking shoulders stopped, and stared wild-eyed at Ignis, his lips still parted in the middle of a forming word. 

“Prompto, listen to me,” Ignis said, as much for Prompto as for himself, to distract him from the burning pain. “You’ve heard all I had to say about you to Noctis, didn’t you?” Prompto opened his mouth, his face so scared that Ignis had to add quickly, “No, I don’t hold it against you, not in the least. Listen very well. All I want to tell you is that I meant what I said. I’ll say it again now. If there’s one chance in a million that I could help you, then I _will_ take that chance, Prompto. And I don’t care about the cost to myself.”

Saying that felt like stepping to the top of a very tall building and looking down. And then when Ignis looked into Prompto’s eyes and saw that they were blue and violet again, it felt like taking another step towards that plunge. Ignis squeezed Prompto’s hand – gently now, now that there was no urgency or necessity. He was just holding Prompto’s hand because he wanted to. The words came easily, and Ignis wasn’t even thinking about sensors, heart rate, or breathing patterns – signs that could be read and interpreted by an android’s reading. All he thought about was how, even from the moment he made the decision to stand by Prompto, he felt himself _fulfilled_. “I made you a promise,” he said slowly, every moment from last night’s fateful events sieving through his mind and distilling into words. “I told you I’d show you there is more to life than surviving. I’m asking you now, again, for the honor to be at your side for that experience. That you would trust me to guide you along that journey.”

Prompto’s lips quivered then, but Ignis wasn’t alarmed. The look on his face was worth a thousand words, and it made Ignis’ heart sign in serenity. He stroked Prompto’s hand, gently but uncertainly, until the blond flipped it around, holding Ignis’ hand in his instead. “Yes,” he said, and Ignis could tell that his unruly sentiments had gone absolutely feral, because he thought he could hear a wobbly note in Prompto’s otherwise perfectly modulated voice. He was okay with this, however. “It would be my honor,” Prompto said, and Ignis smiled. “I can’t think of a better teacher.”


	3. Chapter 3

They didn’t exactly kiss and make up, and it wasn’t because they talked about feelings that their problems went away. First of all, Ignis still had to drive himself to the hospital to have his hands properly mended. Prompto stayed with Noctis to have his firewall and other defenses upgraded. The two androids, as different as could be, seemed to have become thick as thieves in no time at all, and Ignis knew he couldn’t have left Prompto in better hands. 

It was the only way he could focus enough on dealing with the concierge of his building, who, Ignis discovered, had sent him an official letter with the threat of eviction. With a mix of threats and cajoling, he managed to get them to drop the fuss, and Ignis could then get into his apartment to tidy up a bit before finally getting into the shower to wash all the blood and accumulated grimes off of his body.

Feeling mostly human again, Ignis collected some clothes in an overnight bag. It was agreed that Prompto would sleep over at LUCIS while his upgrade was being tested – just in case, Noctis had said almost carelessly – and Ignis had decided to come join him. On his way back to LUCIS, he stopped by the office to return his rented tuxedo to a grateful Iris and saw Gentiana to officially cash in his days off for a long overdue holiday.

“Do I have to worry about anything else?” Lunafreya had asked him. Ignis assured her that he didn’t know what she was talking about. 

By the time he returned to LUCIS, it was already nightfall. The interactive map in his car lit up again, but it wasn’t leading him to Noctis’ basement. Instead, the energy-saving, solar-powered street lights lit up along the path to point him towards the residence area. LUCIS maintained a few blocks of housing arrangements for its employees and visitors. The screen informed Ignis, apologetically, that all the executive suites had been rented out, but a student dorm had been reserved in his name.

He parked his car under the trees and made his way up. There were no stuffy security measures like palm scanners or digicode, and yet Ignis felt perfectly safe. In the lift, he ran into a group of small children on their way down to the playground area, a Chocobo plushie tossed between the three of them. 

He hadn’t expected Prompto to already be in the room waiting for him but there he was. When Ignis stepped in, the android uncoiled from his waiting position like a spring, hurrying over to meet Ignis at the door. Once there, he seemed to run out of idea on what would constitute an acceptable greeting, so he stopped in his tracks and aimed a hopeful smile at Ignis while bouncing very slightly from one foot to the other, waiting. 

Ignis didn’t know why, but he had expected the upgrades to change Prompto’s appearance. Now, he felt silly to realize that they hadn’t, not at all. Sure, Prompto was no longer in his blood-spattered black suit. Instead, he had on a sleeveless black top that hugged his form, cargo pants, and boots. His arm had been sealed where it had split to reveal his blade, though Ignis didn’t ask whether the knife was removed altogether or merely sheathed. In any case, the synthetic skin there was smooth, with not the barest sign of a seam (and for a second Ignis wondered if this was Prompto’s intention in picking this outfit, to show his bare arms and reassure Ignis that he was no threat at all.) On his wrist, where the bar code was, Prompto wore a thick leather bracelet – the cords pulled tight enough to the skin to not even allow a peek at the tattoo underneath. 

“Well, hello there. You look…” Ignis paused when he saw the way Prompto’s entire body tense, the full force of his expectation turned to the words Ignis was about to say. And, like a coward, Ignis swerved. “You look like you raided Noctis’ wardrobe.”

Prompto didn’t exactly deflate, nor did his smile fall. But there definitely was something different about his air that made Ignis regret his words instantly. Prompto, for his part, managed a little laugh, scratching the back of his head. “Yeah, well… He has more than he’d ever wear, and we’re almost the same size! And if you look at the things inside his wardrobe one by one, they’re not that bad. It’s only when he puts them together that it’s a problem.”

“You don’t say,” Ignis agreed wryly, recalling the tuna slippers. “Makes you wonder if he doesn’t do it on purpose.” He shifted a little more into the apartment, looking around to get a feel of the place. He was glad that it wasn’t of the depressing sparse minimalist style that some establishments mistook for class. The space was small but functional, the furniture looked comfortable, and the kitchen corner was well-equipped with basic appliances. There was even a small private shower, and a separate sleeping area with a small bed, which would make this a heaven for any intern who came to lodge here (Ignis knew, because he remembered his law school dorm all too well.)

Ignis put the bag he’d brought with him from the car on the counter and spun, almost abruptly, to face Prompto. The words felt like a mouthful of marbles, but Ignis decided to let them spill out before he choked on them. “You look nice,” he said, almost forcefully, and then grounded himself. “I like what you’ve done with the hair.” Chuckling now, he gestured to his own hair – now styled, as opposed to the sad, slept-on mess he’d sported since waking up this morning. “As another heavy hair gel user, I appreciate the effort and artistry. The flow—” The more he talked, the more of a phony posh accent he was heaping on. “—the natural feel overall of the work. Admirable.”

Ignis didn’t have to finish his silly joke for Prompto to start giggling. His cheeks went pink, and the sight was distracting enough that Ignis found himself plunging into quietness just so he could watch. The compliment seemed to have given Prompto back some of his confidence, though he did twist the strand of hair that hung past his ear sheepishly as he smiled. “Thanks,” he said. “I guess anyone can manage a half decent hairstyle as long as you put some work into it. Unlike Noctis.” He let out a laugh at that. “What’s the deal with Noctis, anyway? Why is he… like that? I asked him, but he told me to ask you. Something about an objective presentation.” Prompto was suddenly somber, the conversation shifting to serious. “I looked him up online – it’s okay, it’s completely safe now. But on the Internet, people write about him like some kind of cryptid! They do agree on some things, though.” He paused for a moment, as if debating whether to ask, and then he blurted out. “Was he really an escort bot? Or Regis Caelum’s son that he made into a robot? Did he really stop the Scourge?”

“Whoa,” Ignis said, holding his hands up to fend off the torrent of questions. He found himself glancing to the corner of the room, where a security camera kept watch from the ceiling, seemingly dormant and unthreatening. The camera shouldn’t be able to pick up sound, but Ignis didn’t think it’d stop Noctis from snooping. Seconds after, as if on cue, his phone buzzed. Ignis pulled it out to the picture of a grinning cat and the message from Noctis. _‘Go ahead,’_ it said. _‘Can’t think of anyone better to make my case. But if you scare of my new BFF we are THROUGH.’_

Prompto’s laughter was a soft and fresh thing when Ignis relayed Noctis’ message to him. “Does he need a case made?” He asked, cheeks pink and star-struck in a way that meant he’d just looked up what ‘BFF’ meant. “Should I be worried?”

“No, don’t be,” Ignis chuckled. He put his phone down on the kitchen counter then, so that he could pick up the kettle and fill it. As he waited for the water to boil, he went to his bag and pulled out… the two mugs from last night. Needing no cue, Prompto clapped when he saw the Moogle and Chocobo, and Ignis bowed with a flourish. He’d figured Prompto would like something familiar here, at least for tonight. He lined the mugs up on the counter and went to peruse the selection of tea in the courtesy platter, selecting a capsule of instant coffee and holding out the rest for Prompto to pick from. “You’re aware of Noctis’ model, yes?”

“Sure!” Prompto nodded, riffling through the tea bags and holding out one. He held onto the bag so Ignis could rip it one-handed and drop it into the mug, before filling both with hot water. “He’s one of the Royals, yeah? LUCIS’ first line ever of androids, the… companion bots? Limited edition? Weren’t they the first ones to get corrupted at the start of the Scourge?”

Ignis hadn’t expected such talk to upset him so much anymore, but it still did. He had to wait until he was settled on the kitchen stool, with the mug of coffee between his hands, to even address what Prompto had said. “That’s… true. He was—I suppose, he still is, a Royal. A part of LUCIS history that they would rather forget.” Ignis wasn’t allowing them to forget that, of course, and neither did Regis. They were united in their hatred for the euphemism, ‘companion bot’. Even the people who went through the troubles to make these androids intelligent, receptive, and unique in personality as well as in appearance, were too cowardly to admit that they were meant to serve only as sex toys. Ignis could only console himself that such things were no longer the norm in the current world. Since his ascent to power, Regis had made sure to purge the sketchy ethics from his own family built firm. He had been the staunchest critic of his forefathers’ failings, and the infallible guardian of the code of ethics that governed LUCIS, and the robotic industry, nowadays. “They were very advanced. Which is… a shame.”

Now Ignis realized he wasn’t immune from euphemisms, himself. A shame? It was a bloody _crime_. His stomach had turned when he witnessed Royals less fortunate than Noctis, violated and mutilated and dumped in the back of some stinking alleys, beautiful faces mangled and minds as complex as an entire universe left to rot. Ignis swallowed the bitterness that the image brought up to the surface and smoothed out his expression to look to Prompto again. “The Royals were attacked first, I suppose, because they had access to people when they were particularly vulnerable, which made the surprise… effective. But Noctis had always been rebellious. Long before the outbreak he’d gone around his limitations and tinkered with his own programming, bypassing his governance module altogether. Ultimately, his modifications saved him against the spread of the virus.” Ignis watched Prompto wrap his hands around his own mug of tea. “Suddenly, he found himself with a big responsibility thrust onto him: he was the only one who knew how to stop the massacre. And he decided his best chance was to turn himself in to LUCIS.”

“Turn himself in?” Prompto repeated, eyes widening. “Did he—Did you mean he gave himself up for experiments?”

Trust another experiment subject to pick up on the nuance so quickly. “That was what he thought would happen, yes,” Ignis agreed. He’d always admired Noctis’ choice, to this day, the courage it’d taken to give himself up for the sake of many, to the people who’d used and abused him all his life. “But Regis Caelum is a better man than most. Even in the crisis, he managed to convince himself and his company that it was better to work with this rogue android than to take him apart. So, they took him in, and listened to him. And… you know the rest.”

“He fixed the Scourge,” Prompto said, his wording childish in his awe. He stared at the mug in his hands as if the reflection in the amber liquid had the answer to all his questions. “An android stopped the Scourge. He saved everyone. All the humans and all the androids that still live now—we are still _us_ because Noctis stopped the Scourge before it spread to us.”

“He gave all of you a little bit of himself,” Ignis agreed. “But don’t say that in front of Noctis. Either he gets bashful, or it gets to his head, and he’d be equally as insufferable.” That startled Prompto into a laugh, and Ignis smiled with him. “I suppose you can now understand why he deliberately neglects his appearance. He’d gone through his entire life being valued only for the way he looked. This is his way of asserting his resistance. However, you should not let that appearance fool you. Noctis is more competent than half the employees of LUCIS combined, and if you want to be secured in your own head, there is no one better to handle the task.”

Having said what he’d wanted to say, Ignis paused to sip from his mug, sighing at the hot, smooth coffee and temporarily forgetting the fact that he was drinking out of a Moogle mug. He let his guard down for a moment, which was a big mistake. When he glanced over at Prompto, Ignis was alarmed to see that the blond was shaking. Great, big blobs of tears were rolling down his cheeks, gathering at his chin before splattering down onto the counter. Ignis could even feel a few minuscule droplets meet his skin.

“Prompto?” Ignis made to stand up, but Prompto shot out a hand to snatch his so quickly and tugged insistently until Ignis sat down. Prompto’s skin had grown red at the cheeks, the color spreading down to his neck and shoulders. Even as he continued to sob, he reached a hand up to wipe the tears from his eyes. 

“S-Sorry,” he said, voice fuzzy and distorted. “I tripped—I think, an unknown module in my emotion emulation package. I-I—” Seeing as he fumbled for words, Ignis squeezed his hand encouragingly. “Noctis, he—He went through all of that alone and—and even now he has to cope! He should be on top of the world and instead he’s hiding out in a basement.” He tipped his head back and let out a frustrated but heart-felt groan. “I want to hug him _so bad_!” 

“Well,” Ignis said, mildly, still working through his surprise at his outburst. Some people would still think it unbelievable that an android might achieve empathy; Ignis, right now, was just amazed that Prompto could be moved to tears over something that had happened years ago to an android he’s just met, after all he’d lived through himself. “I’m sure Noct won’t have any objection. Well, he’d probably pretend he does. But I’m sure he’d appreciate it.”

It took Prompto a few minutes to calm down. When he did, he picked up his mug of tea and took big gulps of it, draining it in one go, as if wanting to replace the moisture he’d just cried. “I’m sorry,” he said, finally. “I’m just—I’m still thinking about how Noctis ended the Scourge. I could have gotten it, and he stopped that from happening. I know, I know he didn’t do it just for me, he probably didn’t even know I existed. But, still… I owe him so, so much.” He stopped then, his eyes growing distant for a moment as if listening to a faraway voice, before he looked back to Ignis again. “I’m sorry. You’re probably thinking I freaked out for no reason. But I thought—I asked Noctis if the reason I acted out last night could be because I had the Scourge.” He let out a shaky, watery laugh. “He told me that was silly, and that I should take his word for it. _Now_ I know why.”

“His word is better than most,” Ignis agreed reassuringly. They went quiet, then, Prompto turning his mug around as he wiped the last of the tears from his face and Ignis watching him. Then, in defiance of the full mug of coffee he’d just drunk, Ignis yawned. “My apologies,” he managed a little sheepish smile when Prompto glanced over. “A lot happened today. I usually have more energy than this.”

“Oh, that’s fine. It’s not like I tired you out or anything,” Prompto returned lightly. Ignis blinked. For a second his tired brain’s response was about to be _‘I wish’_ and he… didn’t know how to process that. At his blank look, Prompto tried to follow up on his joke. “Because I tried to kill you… You know?”

“I’m aware, Prompto.” Ignis almost laughed. “And I’m about to prove myself to be the densest target you could ever have, because I’ll be heading to bed, now.” He got up, gathering the mugs and carrying them to the sink to wash. “You can use some rest yourself. You do have a charging dock here, do you?”

“Yeah!” Prompto confirmed, leaning over the counter to watch Ignis work. Then he fell quiet for a moment. “But, uh. It’s inside the bedroom. So… if you don’t want me just sitting there staring at you like a freak, I could—”

“—sleep on the bed?” Ignis suggested.

They both paused at that. If this was a comedy, they’d be staring at each other and going, _‘What?’_ Ignis held his breath and kept his gaze steady. 

Prompto, for his part, simply went, “What?”

“I know you don’t need to sleep,” Ignis said, sounding more reasonable than he felt. His heart was hammering, he couldn’t believe he’d let those words out of his mouth! Still, he soldiered on. “But I believe lying down is a good resting position for recharging, yes? All I’m saying is,” he swallowed, suddenly feeling very hot under the collar. “I won’t mind. At all. We could talk some more before bed, before I fall asleep. If you are up to it.”

The silence went on for long enough that Ignis knew Prompto wouldn’t give him an answer, not right away. So, he just went about finishing what he was doing, drying the mugs and putting them away neatly on the rack. Then, he picked up his overnight bag and went on to the bedroom. All along, there was no ignoring the prickling sensation of Prompto’s eyes on him. Even with a wall separating them, as Ignis removed his clothing and pulled on an old t-shirt and sweat pants, he felt the weight of Prompto’s attention on him. 

The light was off. Ignis was in bed. The bed, as befitting a student dorm, was solid and comfortable enough, if a bit narrow. He felt awfully self-conscious as he pulled the blanket to his chest. His glasses were on the side table along with his phone and wallet. Everything was in order. And yet, the sense of waiting was still in the air, and Ignis knew he wouldn’t be able to fall asleep until his suspense was resolved, one way or another.

Lucky for him, it didn’t take long for the other shoe to drop. Prompto’s footsteps were quiet, but there was no mistaking them as he shuffled, awkwardly, into the bedroom. He tripped over the charging dock, squeaked, and tried to right it. Ignis half expected him to sit down and stay there, but he was surprised. Slowly but surely, Prompto continued to walk, crossing the small distance to Ignis’ bed side. “Ignis?” He started, slowly, in a whisper. 

Ignis hummed in acknowledgement and opened his eyes to find them eye to eye. Prompto was kneeling on the floor, with his hands folded on the bed and his chin resting on top of them. He looked young and scared, and Ignis was about to gently encourage him, but Prompto beat him to it. The confession, unprompted, poured out of him like spilt milk. “Ignis, I didn’t take out the knife. It’s still in there. It’s in my arm. Do you still want me in bed with you? Do you still want me in here with you, even? After what happened, I-I’m not sure it’d be a smart thing.”

Ah. Ignis exhaled, only now understanding fully Prompto’s reluctance. It made sense as it was to him, but before he could say anything, Prompto was nervously trying to fill in the silence. “I just, I know I used it to hurt you. But it’s part of my body. It was there even before I met my employer. It was put there for a reason, you know? I figure, I figure I know little enough about myself as it is – where I came from, what I was before all this. It makes no sense to throw what little I did know away.” He blinked then, big eyes looking owlish in the half light. “Is it silly?” His voice cracked. “Is it reckless? I don’t wanna hurt you again. I’ll—I’ll go sit outside, I guess, I can do that—”

“Prompto,” Ignis spoke up, as quickly as he could. He reached out and placed his hand on Prompto’s wrist, his fingers brushing the android’s face. “I did say that I wanted to help you, and I meant all of you. If you feel that blade is a part of you, then I’ll help you cope with it, too. For the record, I don’t think it silly or reckless. It is yours, and it takes courage to not clip your own claws just so you can be better accepted.”

Prompto didn’t reply immediately, so Ignis gave him a moment to process. During that time, though, he drew back a little, scooting on the narrow bed until he was pressed as far as he could go against the wall. Prompto hesitated for a few motionless moments longer, then he finally moved. Ignis heard the clicks and rustles of his boots as he toed them off, felt the tip of the mattress when he sat down there. And then, after a moment as if to fortify himself, Prompto laid himself down on the bed at his side, slowly stretching out then holding perfectly still.

They were quiet, at first. Ignis tried to lose himself in the rhythm of his breathing, but he kept getting distracted by the blinking pattern of the charging dock panel on the wall. The same display was blinking at the side of Prompto’s neck, and Ignis unconsciously matched his breathing to that. He hadn’t realized he was staring until Prompto turned his head, startling him with how close their faces were. He could see the glint of the blinking light reflected in Prompto’s eyes, barely enough to call up a hint of violet. He heard himself let out a slow breath, and then more rustles as Prompto turned fully to lie on his side and look at him. 

“Ignis,” he said, his voice softer than a whisper. “Have you ever felt like you don’t belong in your body?”

The question was startling in its honesty, though of course, now that Ignis thought about it, it made sense perfectly. He should have thought about helping Prompto come to term with his body before everything else. He blinked, and it seemed like encouragement enough, because Prompto continued to speak.

“I know all about this body. I have the factory manual all loaded up, I have all the specs.” Ignis vaguely wondered if Prompto had also already known these technical slangs, or had it been Noctis who’d shared them with him. “I know the location of even the smallest circuit, or how thick the silicone is at different parts of my skin. But whenever I see a reflection of myself, I still freak out. I still don’t know if it’s my face, or someone’s. Or if it’s all in my head.” He paused a little, and it looked as though the blinking charging light was spelling out his inner turmoil. “That’s why I—I didn’t want the knife out. Not yet. I know it’s evil, and it hurt you. But it feels like the only part of me that I actually know. You know?”

“I understand, Prompto.” Carefully rolling over in the narrow space, Ignis turned to face the blond, too. The tips of their noses practically touched. “I think we already established that the blade, by itself, is not an evil thing. You weren’t the one wielding it. You don’t have to blame yourself. I know it is easier said than done, so that’s why I’m here – to remind you of it, over and over, as long as you need me to.” He drew in a breath. “As for your question… Yes. I do. Sometimes, I want desperately not to belong in this body. Not to even be… this person. I chose for myself a difficult job, and I care far too much about it. I’d lost too many people, failed to save them all, no matter how hard I worked.” It was hard to admit this, and it would never fail to come to his tongue with a bitter taste. “Sometimes, I have to do things I’d thought I’d never do. Afterwards, it feels like I’m a snake that had shed a skin. I don’t even recognize myself. But when that happens, I think about the ones I did save. And I tell myself that I deserve to be here.”

It was far too intimate, and it nearly suffocated Ignis to say all this to the closed space between them. So, he rolled back onto his back, flinging his arm over his eyes. “The gala we met at—I hate those kinds of things the most. By the time I’m done, I don’t even smell like myself.” He glanced over at Prompto and tried a smile. “But when it’s over, I put on my ugly sweater and baggy pants, and my ugly glasses. I remind myself of who I am when nobody’s looking at me. I still exist. Some days, it’s hard. But I’m still here, and the doubts aren’t. And that is a victory.”

Ignis felt Prompto’s hand slide into his own. It felt limited and inadequate, but he squeezed it. “That sounds… nice,” Prompto offered, uncertainly. “… Do you know any place that has a deal on ugly sweaters and baggy pants?”

That made Ignis laugh and the weight on his chest suddenly evaporate. He turned to Prompto again, this time holding his gaze with amusement. “Prompto. You know that I can do you one even better.”

*

“Um,” Prompto spoke up after a respectful silence had elapsed. Ignis appreciated the show of reluctance, as he knew Prompto hadn’t needed to hesitate to express his surprise. “Are we… at the right spot?”

“I would say so,” Ignis replied, having found the sign identifying the business and confirming that they hadn’t taken a wrong turn and landed somewhere else altogether. “Only I don’t remember it being quite so… yellow.”

‘Yellow’ was something of an understatement. To be honest, the color wasn’t all that shocking or eye-bleeding, but it was the sheer… quantity of it. The buttercup-colored paint coated the outside of an entire hangar, the expanse of color broken only by navy blue letters and rust brown stripes. In a city that valued dark, somber colors – as testified by the HQ building of LUCIS Corp. – the sudden splash of color was more than a bit surprising. 

Prompto had apparently decided that he’d exhausted his ways of expressing disbelief without seeming rude. He nudged Ignis’ side with his elbow, gesturing upwards with his chin. Above the sign – and Ignis had no idea how he had missed it – stood a giant hammerhead shark. It was plastic, obviously, and ‘standing’ was perhaps not the most accurate word, as the thing was skewered head down on a giant pole, gently rotating, ensuring it could be seen from all directions all the way from the highway. 

“Yep, you’re at Hammerhead alright, so y’all can stop gawking, now.”

Ignis spun to the sound of the voice. A car was slowly approaching, hiccupping and jerking the entire way despite its driver’s best efforts. When she was close enough, Cindy rolled down the window and poked her head out, curls of golden hair tousled under her cap, oil smudges perpetually across her nose and cheeks. When she saw him, her smile broadened. “Ignis! Thought it might be your car! I was thinking, here’s a guy who knows how to treat his car right. But maybe not all that right, since you’re bringing her in to see Cindy! What’s the matter with the old gal?”

“Nothing at all, Cindy,” Ignis reassured her, then quickly revised when he remembered the state of his car after he’d bled all over it. “Well, perhaps a thorough cleaning and overall maintenance wouldn’t hurt.” He fished out his keys, which Cindy snatched greedily. “You can have her, I’ll be here for a while. Is Gladiolus in?”

“Isn’t he always,” Cindy scoffed. “Taking up my space with all his fancy machines as usual, the big lug. I’m tellin’ ya, it’s about time I review the terms of his lease. Well, don’t you worry about your car. I’m gonna have some quality time with her.” She tugged her cap down to a rakish angle and winked at Prompto, shifting her attention to him suddenly. “As you will, with Gladio, I assume?”

The blond squirmed then and replied uncertainly, “Um. Depends on what kind of quality time you’re thinking?” When Cindy refused to elaborate, he glanced over to Ignis desperately.

“We’re just going to look,” Ignis said. Which, yes, he realized a second too late, didn’t sound any less suggestive. He sighed at Cindy’s toothy grin, pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, and decided to fall back on basic courtesy before he could stick his foot any further up his mouth. “Cindy, this is Prompto. I’d like to show him Gladio’s workshop.”

“Nice to meet ya, Prompto,” Cindy returned, sticking her arm out of the car window to offer her hand to Prompto to shake. Ignis could almost pin point the moment Prompto’s knees melted. Cindy, still smiling, fumbled with the key ring hanging from her belt, then found a badge with a button, which she pointed at the hangar door and pressed. The door before them started to roll up then, with its own spectacle of noises and blinking lights. Cindy gestured, keys clinging in her hand. “Well, go on in. Papaw and I will take care of your car, all quick like. It’ll be more than enough time for Gladio to show you the world, honey.” 

The hangar was as cheerful inside as it was outside. Not all yellow thankfully, but that color was still ever present on the white, dirt-proof wall. It ran in neat lines along the bottom of the wall, or in whimsical streaks and splashes, bright in defiance of all the oil and grimes that were a fixture inside a garage. As Cindy rolled in behind them in the sputtering car, it was as if the place came alive with her presence. Lights went on, machines hummed, and there was the distinctive scent of metal being heated. The smell of paint and solvent wafted in the air, as well as the sting of strong soap, making Ignis’ eyes almost water. Still, he walked slowly, allowing Prompto to take in all that was happening around them as they made their way towards a quieter corner of the garage.

A temporary cubicle had been erected here, separating Gladio’s workshop from Cindy’s garage. As they approached, they heard the thrum of heavy metal music, pulsing out from the flimsy plastic housing of the module like an aura. The moment Ignis rapped on the door with his knuckles, the music went quiet. And then the door flew open and Gladio’s voice greeted them. “Since when did you have to knock on my door? Just come right in, Iggy!”

Ignis rolled his eyes, but didn’t make a retort about observing basic courtesy, as the two of them had had this conversation too many times to count already. He exchanged a look with Prompto – who returned it with a bewildered but supportive glance – then the two of them stepped into the workshop proper. The place sported perhaps as many machines as the garage it was in, except the devices were smaller and more tightly packed. The wall was lined with old film posters, mostly romantic – Ignis idly marked a framed poster of ‘The Princess Bride’ as Gladio’s newest acquisition. In a corner, there was a bookshelf crammed with cheap paperbacks, all beat up and well thumbed. The faint ‘thump’ of Ignis closing the door behind him actually caused a book on the overflowing shelf to fall off, revealing a cover featuring a red-haired maiden in a flimsy green dress with the bodice quite ripped open. Gladio followed his gaze, and snorted, “Admiring my literature?”

Prompto was looking up at Gladio. Then looking up some more. Already tall compared to Ignis, Gladio towered well over the blond android. He was wearing a black tank top that might as well be pasted onto his body, and low-riding jeans. His hair, which had been cropped short the last time Ignis had seen him, was now long past his shoulders. His tattoos had more details done to it, though Ignis would be hard pressed to point out which. As per tradition, Gladiolus never looked quite the same each time Ignis saw him, except for two things: the molten gold of his eyes, and the scars on his face. Back when Gladio had escorted Noctis through the madness-laden streets of the Scourge outbreak, he hadn’t been able to be scarred, only scratched and scored – but he’d replicated these damages on his human form, as a reminder of the events that brought them together. 

“Like my tat, huh?” Gladio was saying to Prompto, who was startled into breaking his stare and fumbling for a way to deny it. Gladio brushed it aside airily. “That’s alright! Made it myself.” A beat of silence, then he added with a grin, “And the skin under it too!”

“Gladiolus, please,” Ignis sighed. He took a step forward so his arm was pressed against Prompto’s, steadying him. “Stop using that line on every android I bring to you. And you wonder why they never come back.” It was a lie. They _always_ came back. “Prompto, this is Gladiolus. He is the current expert on the android body modification business.”

“You name a mod, I make it,” Gladio agreed easily. “As weird as you like, or as human as you like. There’s no judgment, none. The options are endless, as they say. Anything you have in mind, or should I bring out the catalogue?”

“Um,” Prompto floundered some more, but valiantly hanging onto the conversation. “I was thinking—maybe I could just, watch you work first?”

The request was made in desperation, but it was a sensible one. Gladio agreed easily enough, with only one condition: that they stayed out of the way. “My clients are skittish enough as it is,” he said, waggling a finger at Prompto. “Just like you, buddy, so you’d understand why I don’t want a couple of strangers hanging around spooking them off. Nothing personal.”

Gladio’s office was a good vantage point. It allowed a good view on the people coming in without being too invasive. As long as they acted natural, nobody looking in could tell they didn’t belong either. Gladio even gave them a cover, even if Ignis doubted it was out of the goodness of his heart. The big android had gleefully brought over a box of his paperwork. Ignis, to return the favor, had reluctantly agreed to straighten his records. 

He’d recruited Prompto to sort the invoices, but otherwise let the blond stare outside as much as he liked, oh-ing and ah-ing over the transformation of the customers. Tattoos, as expected, were the most popular modification, as well as piercings. As for hair colors, the androids didn’t just dye it, they changed the hair out altogether. Not all mods were that straightforward, however. There was one android who came in with perfectly white skin and came out gleaming black like ebony. A few of them had their eyes changed, one with a flower pattern embed into the eyeball. Some of them had synthetic parts swapped out for organic parts, even if it meant they left bloody and visibly in pain. But they all had the same satisfied look when they walked past the office and to the exit. They were all hopeful, as if they all believed their lives were about to be changed.

“How does he know to do all that?” Prompto exclaimed, obviously unable to hold his curiosity in any longer. He kept one eye on the checkbook he was supposed to balance and the other on Gladio, who was showing a new client a new set of teeth. “He never turned anyone away! I mean, even if he has access to the manuals of every model of androids that ever existed, he still can’t know it all. Some are just not meant to be customized. If you wear out, they get a new one in your place, simple as that! And heck, if they were modified that much, they must not even follow the manual anymore.” He looked to Ignis then. “Does he even have a manual to himself?”

“I don’t think he does. But he did a good deal of experiments.” When Prompto’s look turned to one to express horror, Ignis added, “Mostly on himself.” When he realized that wording wasn’t any better, he hurried to clarify. “Do you remember what he said about making the skin himself? He actually did.”

If Ignis had said that to literally anyone else, Ignis knew, their reaction would be one of disgust. Prompto, to his credit, only looked startled. “Okay,” he said slowly, turning his full attention on Ignis as if to monitor him for signs of jokes. “Come again?”

Ignis chuckled. As he arranged the story inside his mind to tell, he found himself quietly amazed, all over again, by the extremes that the androids could represent. Gladio’s story was as extraordinary as Noctis’, though in another way altogether. “He didn’t use to have a form,” Ignis explained, lowering his voice. It wasn’t as if Gladio kept his origins a secret, but it was still such an intimate thing that it would be inappropriate to say it so loud that random stranger might overhear. “He did have a physical body, but it wasn’t humanoid. He was the robotic arms system that hauled merchandises and moved containers at the harbor.” He paused a little, straightening up the timeline in his head. “He’s much older than you or Noctis. In fact, his kind was judged obsolete and decommissioned long before the Scourge. Some scavengers bought him out from the recycling plant and used his parts to rebuild something else. A bot for the fighting pits.” 

For all that he meant to be a neutral narrator, Ignis couldn’t help the disgust in his voice when he mentioned the fighting pits. Such places didn’t exist anymore, but the fact that they had sprung into existence at all, for any period of time, was still a stain on the face of humanity. “Somehow, in those conditions, he still managed to retain a spark of himself. The longer he remained the champion of the fighting pits, the more stable that spark became, until he realized he didn’t have to stay in the pits if he didn’t want to. He escaped, then.” Ignis made a moue at that. “It was the day the Scourge broke out. I could say it was lucky for him, in a way. His system was too primitive for the Scourge to infect, and the general chaos meant that a hulking metal patchwork three feet tall didn’t even draw anyone’s attention. Not like he had the sense to stay out of troubles, though. The moment he saw Noctis being cornered, he had to leap in and intervene.”

Over the years, Ignis had tried, to no avail, to understand Gladio’s motive behind that turn of events. What would make him protect a stranger he didn’t even know? Most of the time, Gladio avoided the question, but one time he did say something that Ignis would never forget. “You’d never imagine how many Royals ended up in the fighting pits,” he’d said while beating the hell out of a piece of red-hot metal with a hammer. “I guess people just liked seeing something pretty pulled apart.” He hadn’t said how many Royals he’d destroyed before he’d found himself in the position to save one. And Ignis hadn’t pressed any further.

All of that was irrelevant now, of course. Ignis sighed as he came upon an entire roll of gas invoice, just stapled together hazardously without any regards to their contents. “Gladio built his first android form in the LUCIS lab, after Noctis helped him secure his neural system. His ‘self’, if you will. He kept modifying that body until he found a shape he liked – and to be honest, I think he still is.” Having pulled out the staple, he set out to sort the bills in chronological order, though next time he really should bill his service, favor or not. Hadn’t Luna told him he ought to be less scrupulous about his billing practice? “I helped him set up this business, and since then he’d earned more than enough to fund his own experiments.”

When Prompto went quiet this time, Ignis already had an idea what to expect. Still, it’d do him no good to make assumptions, so he looked over slowly, carefully, keeping his voice and expression neutral as he probed, “Prompto?”

As he’d expected, the expression that greeted him was one of splotchy red-faced distress. The tear tracts were already marking their invasion over Prompto’s face, as if the blond had started crying long before Ignis had concluded his story. Unsure of what to say, Ignis put down his papers and reached out with the intention of patting Prompto’s shoulder.

Except Prompto snatched his hand and clutched it to his chest, clearly having no intention to let it go anywhere else. 

“I looked up fighting pits!” He wailed, pulling Ignis’ hand half way to his face before he seemed to remember it was not tissue paper. “They’re _awful_. Just awful. I know humans could be awful, but that—why? Why would they?” For a second Ignis felt dread, and he held his breath expecting Prompto’s distress to tip over to hatred any moment now. When Prompto looked up at him and his eyes were still forget-me-not blue, the relief was almost dizzying. “But it’s amazing. To think he survived that, and still managed to take care of others. And building himself from scratch! He’s like, like Iron Man!” At Ignis’ blank look, Prompto ventured further. “You know? Made himself a heart from a box of scraps in the desert?”

“Huh, never heard that one before,” Gladio said, from the doorway. He was leaning against the frame and looking in with an amused expression. “What can I tell you, always been a self-made man.” Ignis smiled wryly, glad that the bigger android’s days of bristling and growing angry at every sign of sympathy were over. Still, the degree of empathy that Prompto was displaying still seemed to take him aback, and he tilted his head at the blond almost warily, waiting to see what he’d do next.

If Prompto had tried to hug him, Ignis thought Gladio would bolt. 

“How do you do it?” A question came from Prompto instead, almost forcefully, making Ignis look over to him. The blond was wiping angrily at his face with his wrist, and the look that he was sending Gladio was as fierce as fire. It was a look that said Prompto meant to chip at the story with questions until it made sense to his mind. “How do you feel like your own person, when there’s a serial number inscribed on your chassis? How do you know you are even the same person, if you weren’t even _there_ most of the time you’ve existed?”

Wordlessly, Ignis looked over to Gladio. He’d already answered these questions – or more accurately, one like them – to the best of his ability. He was hoping Gladio could give Prompto the answer from another point of view. As he looked, Gladio seemed to be thinking his answer over. He was quite sure the man had had this conversation often, if not countless times – Prompto wasn’t the only lost android in this new world after the Scourge. But Gladio didn’t let that stop him from considering the answer closely every time, carefully considering how to make his answer appeal the most to each individual that asked his opinion. 

“I guess you never really know, for sure,” Gladio admitted. “Hell, I’m guessing even the humans don’t know. I mean, their free will isn’t all that _free_. When they make a decision, what says for sure that decision is theirs and not just the result of everything that’d been done to them all their lives? Just flip a switch, change a track, everything coming crashing down in the end, just like that? The only thing you can do is make a choice when you gotta, whatever feels right for you at the time, and then stick around for long enough to see if you can live with it.”

Prompto was quiet as he turned the answer over in his mind. Ignis saw his jaw working several times, as if he was about to say something then stopped. Instinctively, he knew Prompto was probably reviewing all the choices he’d made since he’d woken up in his employer’s warehouse. Did he think he could live with the outcome? Ignis didn’t know why his fists clenched, how his hands seemed to shake. But in the end, he lifted his head and looked over to Ignis, and _that_ seemed to help him make up his mind.

Even so, Prompto didn’t speak right away. Instead he lifted his arm, wiping the tears from his eyes with his wrist. “That isn’t really helpful, you know,” he said, not quite steady, but Ignis smiled to hear the faintest of attitude there. “I was hoping you’d say get a haircut or a tattoo or something. Not, like, give me a lifetime’s worth of homework.” 

“Well, as long as you can live with that,” Gladio laughed. It was quiet, nobody had come in for a while, and Gladio picked up a rag to wipe his hands on. His eyes were still intent on Prompto, though now he resembled nothing more than a sculptor considering a block of marble and wondering what he could free from inside. “It does help, though. Appearance, I mean – and I ain’t saying that just because I make my living off of it. It’s not shallow or anything the purists try to feed to you. The closer your physical body looks like the one you see in your head, the easier it is to anchor in your mind that it’s you. Living. Going about your day. Doing your things. So, do you have any idea what you want done yet? Of course, no shame in liking the way you already look, neither.”

Prompto opened his mouth to speak, but it seemed Gladio already knew the answer. His expression was so gleeful it was insufferable. “Hold on a sec! It’s confidential, from this point on.” He gave Ignis a teasing look at that. “You know what that means, mister lawyer. Take a walk.”

“There’s no need for such unpleasant manners,” Ignis sighed, rolling his eyes almost theatrically. But inside him there was the smallest seed of uncertainty. He’d only gotten Prompto back after all, and even knowing Prompto would be in good hands with Gladio, it was still a little nerve-wracking to let him out of his sight. It was only Prompto’s hopeful expression that eased Ignis’ mind, and he nodded quickly, not wanting to make Prompto wait longer as he second-guessed himself. “I understand. I’ll be seeing Cindy and Cid, then. Please give me a call when you’re done.”

“I’ll be gentle,” Gladio called after him as he walked away. Ignis didn’t dignify that with a reaction, though he did give in and looked over his shoulder a bit. To his (selfish and wholly unjustified) relief, Prompto was watching him leave, more nervous than ever, but he waved reassuringly when he caught Ignis’ eyes. Ignis smiled in return and closed the office door so that client and artist may talk unhindered. 

The whole thing hardly took any time. Ignis was still in the middle of being chewed out by Cindy for getting blood on the car interior when his phone buzzed with a message from Gladio. _‘Come get your boyfriend,’_ it said. Ignis put the phone away quickly, afraid of the barrage of questions that Cindy would pile on him if she only caught sight of _that word_. He paid for the servicing (never without a generous tip, as it was always prudent to stay in your mechanics’ good graces) before making a quick retreat across the hangar and back to Gladio’s workshop.

The lights were out, the blinds lowered and closed. Prompto hovered at the entrance, slightly anxious, looking exactly like the last child to be picked up at the end of class. He was… loitering, or at least trying very hard to look that way. His hands were thrust deep into his pockets, his shoulders hunched even as he looked up to meet Ignis’ eyes. “Gladio went home already. He said something about a date.”

“I see.” Ignis made sure not to look down at the hands that Prompto was trying so hard to hide. Somehow, he was nearly elbow-deep in his pockets (which either meant that Noctis had even stranger tastes in clothing than he’d thought, or he’d somehow broken the laws of physics to have endless pockets on his pants.) Ignis thought he had a pretty good guess on what modification Prompto had made. Had he decided to get rid of the bar code? Or have his blade taken out, after all? Ignis wouldn’t be surprised if Prompto had gone for one or both of them and was somehow feeling bad about it. He was preparing words to reassure Prompto that he was no cowards, that he wasn’t betraying or lying to himself, that he didn’t have to think himself shallow for making surface changes—

Until Prompto took his hands out of his pockets, and that taught Ignis that he really shouldn’t make assumptions.

Prompto had sensed Ignis’ averted gaze, had known exactly where Ignis was _not_ looking, and why. Someday Ignis would really like for the blond to explain to him how his intuition worked. For now, when Prompto snapped his head up to meet Ignis’ eyes in a challenge, Ignis found that he had other things to take in.

The skin on Prompto’s face, all white and smooth earlier, was now as speckled as the shell of an egg.

Ignis didn’t think that he was staring just yet, but Prompto clearly expected him to. “I figured I’d go with something low-key,” he said, fumbling through his words expecting to fill in an awkward silence of some length. “My hair and eyes are okay, to me, I mean. It’s not like I’ve spent enough time with them that I’d get bored of them already. Facial hair is not my thing, not on me, at least not now, I might change my mind later, but I’m not feeling like it. And, well, these just speak to me.” He paused, was quiet for a moment as though to review his verbal spew and cringed. Gamely though, he went on and closed it with an awkward, “What do you think?” 

Ignis was sorry to say that his gaze had wandered. Hard not to, because he’d just realized that Prompto’s face was not the only place suddenly adorned with freckles. His shoulders too now bore a splattering of small brown spots the delicate color of café au lait. Gladio was nothing if not thorough, and as Ignis traced the pattern of the freckles, he wondered just exactly what about little brown spots that was so charming.

“They suit you,” he said finally, because it was true. The freckles took away some of the artificially perfect smoothness of Prompto’s complexion. They stood out when his face changed colors, and something about their placement drew attention to his big liquid eyes. As if to demonstrate the effectiveness of the freckles, Prompto was blushing very slightly, and the pink of his cheek complimented the tan of his freckles perfectly. “Really, Prompto,” Ignis added, suddenly feeling the inadequacy of his previous words. He was unwilling to repeat that mistake a second time. “You look really good.”

Prompto’s blush spread a bit more to his ears, and he dipped his head only so that he could look up at Ignis shyly from under pale lashes. He wasn’t perfectly at ease yet, however. It seemed that he felt obligated to answer the question that was still hanging between then, holding out his wrist and pulling back the bracelet he wore like armor. The bar code was still a bold black scar on the tender skin there. “I… decided not to be afraid of it,” he said, making his voice strong even if it did break a little. He was nervous – more nervous even than when he’d admitted to Ignis he hadn’t had his knife taken out. “It’s just a mark on my skin, isn’t it? If my employer still had me under his thumb, it doesn’t even matter if I still have a bar code or not. And vice versa. You know.” He let out a little titter, running a hand through his hair, breaking the style that he’d spent twenty minutes on this morning. “This is probably silly, but… I prefer to keep it as a reminder of us! You know. When I showed it to you, and you called me Prompto.” 

Ignis was… well… Charmed, for sure, but he was also ashamed, like a fraud that had been found out. “At the time, I was trying frantically to save my skin,” he blurted out, not even making an attempt at subtleties. He didn’t know why Prompto’s trust brought out in him such a visceral reaction. “I was scared. I would be embarrassed to be remembered by that.” He took in a breath, and then paused as his own words broke through the haze of his mind and mortification set in. “And now I’ve overstepped myself. I apologize. This isn’t about me. You don’t have to explain yourself to me, Prompto. I wanted to show you your options and help you make your own choices, but it seems to me you’re doing quite fine by yourself already.”

“I know, I know,” Prompto agreed, his voice almost indulgent. His expression, also, was soft, and Ignis felt like he could melt if he looked in his eyes for too long. “Geez, you sure are hard on yourself. Relax, won’t you? It’s good of you to want to be honest with me. Not many people bother. Not that I could tell, not that I’ve seen that many people.” Prompto cut off his own rambling, and Ignis was reassured that at least he was about as nervous as Ignis was. After a few deep breaths, he continued, “I wanted to tell you. I wanted to let you know why I made the choices I made.” After a pause, he held his hand up again, except this time he was working at the knot of the bracelet, first with just fingers, then with his teeth, trying to loosen it. 

When that was done, Prompto took a half step closer to Ignis, almost involuntarily like he wasn’t even aware of his own body. He reached out for Ignis’ wrist. Ignis didn’t even have to wonder what he wanted – when he felt the clasp of the leather bracelet around his own wrist, he instinctively held his hand up so Prompto had an easier time tying it on him. 

He could be thinking about the implications of the gesture, but he’d decided that he wouldn’t. Not immediately. Just focus on making his breathing steady, and on the play of the light as it pooled in the hollow of Prompto’s eyes and slid along his cheekbones, over the freckles. 

“I know you were scared,” Prompto was saying. His eyes were intent on the knot, his head bent, so Ignis could only see how his ears were reddening. “But Ignis, you sold yourself short, you know. You weren’t just thinking of a way to save your skin. You wanted to save me. With all the scans, or without, I knew it. You made your choice.” He bent his head even closer, stopping just short of resting his forehead on Ignis’ shoulder. He was close enough that Ignis’ breaths swayed the strands of blond hair framing his face. “_That’s_ what I want to remember. That’s what I want to be. To be able to make choices I can live with, no matter the circumstances.”

Ignis breathed a little easier for a few seconds, then realized he was getting choked up again. It didn’t take long to identify the feeling swelling inside his chest, making him feel grand and light, as pride. “Don’t let Gladio know you took his advice that seriously,” he found himself saying. “I don’t want to give him more ammunition to be even smugger than he already is.”

The beat of silence that followed worried Ignis a bit. Was that way out of line? Was he acting insensitive, given that Prompto had just bared his feelings and Ignis had to react by making a lame joke? He was about to apologize again – and then Prompto burst out laughing. 

“Your face!” He said, giggling so hard his whole body shook, and now his forehead _did_ come to rest against Ignis’ collarbone. “Oh, bet I made you regret _that_ choice right there!”

Relieved and helplessly amused, Ignis found himself giving in to the laughter too. “Oh, you little—” he said, and Prompto laughed even harder, so much that his body nearly crashed against Ignis’. Ignis had to fling a hand up to steady them both, and he kept a loose grip on Prompto’s arm, just in case. “Very well. I will admit it, you got me.”

The two of them stood like that, giggling alone in their little corner. They might as well be in their own little world. When they managed to quiet their fits, Ignis finally looked down at saw how close they were standing. Prompto noticed him looking, and his eyes lingered for a second at Ignis’ hand on his arm before snapping up to meet Ignis’ in challenge. As if he was daring Ignis to apologize for what they were doing, or to find anything wrong with it. 

The mix of adoration, admiration and challenge sent a surge of affection in Ignis, so much that he was almost dizzy. For a moment his mind was truly blank. He wasn’t considering the consequences. He wasn’t thinking about what he was doing beyond that it was _right_. He knew this for a fact, and so he leaned forward and pressed his lips to the top of Prompto’s head. That much was enough to feel the man go still, and then Prompto’s arms came out to wrap around Ignis’ waist. 

The gentle pressure made Ignis sigh, and for a moment it was hard to tell who was anchoring whom. Maybe it was both of them anchoring each other, and that was how it should work. Each of them, bringing out the best in the other. And that was right.


	4. Chapter 4

“Um, Ignis,” Iris said, in a mild voice that absolutely meant, ‘What in hell do you think you’re doing?’ “We’re not supposed to be taking in any more interns, are we?”

“Um,” Ignis stalled for a second to think through his options. He found himself unwilling to contradict Iris, who, he knew, had been the most ferocious among all their internship candidates – the fact that she had beaten fifty-odd rivals to be the only one hired was proof of that. He then glanced at Prompto, who, in his pressed slacks and button-up and freckled-faced enthusiasm, had never looked more like an intern. “This is not an intern, Iris. Prompto is my… client.”

Iris’ eyes narrowed, and Ignis sweated at his flimsy save. It wasn’t even a lie, but it sure sounded like one. On one hand, Ignis wasn’t one to call clients by their first names, and he had no business dealing with clients while he was supposed to be on holiday anyway. On the other hand, his reputation of taking in pro bono (not to say charity) cases – which Prompto also looked like – was a well-established fact. So, Iris backed off, all smiles and helpful enthusiasm. “Well, in that case, if you need a hand you know where to find me!”

“She’s intense,” Prompto whispered two corridors after, as if afraid Iris might still overhear then. He followed closely on Ignis’ heels and was trying his best to ignore all the questioning looks from the associates in the open space offices they crossed. “Holy hell. I do look like one of them. We’re all like… clones!” Hastily, his hand went to his neck to loosen the first two buttons, roll up his sleeves, then tug his shirttail out of his trousers. This morning he’d been so excited at a chance to ‘play dress up’, and now he was desperately making sure the misunderstanding wouldn’t happen again.

“Don’t flatter yourself, your suit isn’t half as expensive,” Ignis retorted wryly. He pulled his office badge from the end of his lanyard and flashed it to the card reader. The lock gave with a click, and the bulletproof glass doors parted for him. “I’d know. I don’t think _my_ suits are half as expensive.” He was the only senior partner still renting his tuxedos, after all. 

Prompto followed him, looking over the office in awe. It was spacious and filled with light from the large glass panes, but Ignis could still feel the stagnant air of an office that had not seen productivity for a while. It made his fingers itch. Still, his priority today was Prompto, so he ignored the blinking light of his inbox and gestured for Prompto to take a seat. “Tea?”

“Yes please!” Prompto perked up, hopefully enough that Ignis smiled. During the past week they’d done all kind of experiments with Prompto’s food intake. Almond milk in his tea was very appreciated, though Ignis noticed Prompto liked cashew milk a lot more. They could, more or less, trust food labels when it came to their animal contents. Their recent ventures into store-bought vegan cookies and cakes hadn’t cause any mishaps. As Ignis set the kettle to boil, he opened a pack of vegan lemon cookies that he’d brought with him, arranging a few on a saucer. Once he’d done some researches into vegan cooking, he would probably be able to make Prompto’s snacks himself.

His hand stilled when he realized what he was thinking. _Get a grip_, he wanted to tell himself. _You’re not a school girl with a crush. What are you going to do next, make him a lunch box?_

Once the tea was done, Ignis brought both cups (neither of which was cartoon-character shaped) to his desk along with the cookies. Prompto was still in his seat, alternating between taking in the view outside the window and admiring the books and decorations inside the office. He looked up at Ignis with a smile and scooted his chair forward a little in anticipation when Ignis sat down across the desk from him.

“All right. As I’d said, the sooner we can get started on your citizenship papers, the better. It won’t be a problem that you don’t have ownership papers or guarantee forms. With the Scourge and what came after, not many androids retain their original identification documents.” Ignis found it a relief that he didn’t have to mince words with Prompto. The android was sensitive, yes, and empathic – but he was also a realist. “Noctis took a scan of your system that would serve the registration administration more than enough. If you allow me to file that blueprint in your place, sign here, and we can start with that.”

It was tedious, mind-numbing work. It was, also, of the utmost importance. Ignis walked Prompto through the steps, and the two of them worked steadily until Prompto’s registration application had been sealed, encrypted, and delivered safely to the city administration. “Now we wait,” Ignis concluded. As much as he would’ve liked to hurry the process along, it was out of his hands now. “There is still the matter of what you’d like to do next, but we’ve earned a well-deserved break. What do you think? We could go out for a walk. You must not have had a chance to see the city for yourself.” 

Prompto shook his head. He glanced outside, squinting at the sun – still quite high and bright despite the lateness of the season. The light must have spoken to him in a way that Ignis didn’t understand himself, but when Prompto turned to him, he was beaming. “Can I bring my camera?”

*

The farmer’s market was one of Ignis’ indulgences. He wasn’t above the occasional furtive trips there during work hours, if only to meet the delivery of fresh ingredients. He was sure Luna and Ravus were quite aware of his clandestine activity but had chosen to let it slip, so he did them the courtesy of never bringing it up. As long as he kept them in homemade chocolate and coconut cookies, he was sure the status quo was quite secure. In any case, Ignis kept his indulgence under control, which was why it was so strange to be strolling along the market in broad daylight, during a work day, and knowing he had no need to hurry, nothing to hide or to be ashamed about.

When he’d offered to show Prompto the city, Ignis’ first thought had been the usual sights – the covered bridges, perhaps, or the rooftop garden where he’d spent many Sundays reading until he had to relent and admit defeat to the invasion of tourists. The farmer’s market was kind of a last-minute decision, but looking at Prompto now, Ignis was glad he’d listened to his hunch.

As far as markets went, this one was pretty impressive. The location was an old farm that had downsized quite a bit, and the owners had decided to divide the free land into stands for farmers and producers from all around the region to come and trade at. Ignis had always been impressed by the large arrays of fruits and vegetables, the wide range of improbable colors, and he was thrilled at the chance to examine these stands at leisure.

He wasn’t the only one. Prompto’s camera was working on overdrive, pointing everywhere and clicking constantly. If he was a little distracted and wandered off in the middle of Ignis’ middle chatter, really, Ignis only had himself to blame for his pedantry and his choice of conversation. Who would even be interested in a discourse on what a blight on their existence zucchinis were, or the merits of kabocha squash over red kuri? Still, when Ignis suggested that they split up, Prompto had shot him such a wounded look that he had not brought that idea up a second time.

They explored the stands together. Ignis found his interest piqued by produce that usually wouldn’t have gotten even a second glance. They couldn’t possibly do all the stands, but Ignis was more than happy to limit their dawdling to vegan products. It occurred to him then that Prompto’s blue-eyed earnestness didn’t only appeal to him. All the stand owners could hardly help themselves; they practically flocked to Prompto to explain to him their trades and answer every question. Even if they left without buying anything, Prompto was still loaded down with free samples and gifts, and Ignis by extension. Ignis had to call an early detour to the car so they could drop off everything.

It was getting to autumn, and yet after their tour of the market Prompto had acquired a truly summery look. His white shirt was opened at the top, and he’d tied up the bottom so it rode high on his waist. Someone had given him a straw hat with a pink ribbon, and he was currently sampling a bottle of carbonated lemonade. The soft sunlight drew the eyes to his freckles, and somehow made it seem like he was glowing. He looked… cute, and it wasn’t until he glanced over and asked what was on Ignis’ mind, that Ignis realized he’d been staring.

“You’ve put on quite a look,” Ignis explained, gesturing in Prompto’s general direction. His hands felt clumsy, somehow, and it took a moment to occur to him that his face was growing a bit hot. He smiled, though, and at least that felt genuine, even if the rest of him was a jittery mess. “Would you like me to take a picture of you?”

That got a pause out of Prompto. The blond stared, as if he had never considered that the camera could be used to take pictures of himself as well as other things and people. He gave Ignis a slow level look, clearly gauging whether he was joking or if he really thought Prompto was worthy of a photo. At length, he seemed to give in to his curiosity, but only partly. “I’d feel weird to have a picture taken of just myself,” he admitted, scuffing a foot over the ground sheepishly. “What about the both of us?”

“Oh, that’s good too,” Ignis agreed. He was a little nervous about pictures himself, given that recently most of the people who wanted pictures of him were journalists who wanted a scandalous portrait to go with their next scandalous headline. “I know it’s harder to take a selfie with a camera, but it can be done.” If she could hear, Iris would certainly remark on how he was old enough to even know a selfie could be taken with a camera. “Would you like to try, or should I?”

Ignis had the advantage of height over Prompto. Theoretically, that was supposed to help with taking a selfie. But he had to focus on _not_ being completely overwhelmed by the feel of Prompto’s head resting so flush and comfortable on his shoulder as they squeezed in together for the shot. Prompto seemed to have gotten warmer after several hours wandering under the sun, and his skin seemed a bit sticky as if he’d handled one too many jam samples. It was terribly endearing. 

Hard as he tried, Ignis still botched up the shot completely, the two of them barely in frame and out of focus. It didn’t seem to matter, though. Prompto was fascinated by the result, and he actually told Ignis ‘please hold’, which Ignis knew by now meant that he was tearing into the Internet to download every tutorial he could get his hands on. When the abstracted look cleared from his eyes and from the way he seized the camera and held it, Ignis could tell Prompto had become an expert on how to take selfies without a front-facing camera.

With one arm stuck straight out as far as it could to serve as a perch to the camera, Prompto started to shuffle them around, finding the best lighting, pumping the camera up and down to find the best angle. “I’d rather have a tripod built into my arm,” he mumbled, blowing a strand of hair out of his face. “Or at least a selfie stick.” 

Ignis had to admit that he was caught off guard. He was hardly posing, only laughing at the joke, when the shutter sounded. 

“You could have warned me!” He protested when Prompto reeled the camera back. The blond was holding the screen angled away from Ignis, though his face was as pleased as punch. “Well? Are you going to show me?”

“Not right now, not yet,” Prompto grinned, hiding the camera behind his back. It wasn’t as if Ignis was planning to take the camera from him, but now seeing as he’d started the game Ignis felt obligated to make a half-hearted, playful grab. Prompto easily danced out of his reach, tittering. “Hey, chill! I’m gonna show it to you in time! For now, just know that it’s a keeper!”

*

The day seemed to go by too fast. As they drove home, the road seemed to spread endlessly in front of them, all paved in pink and gold from the setting sun. It occurred to Ignis that his time with Prompto was now just as endless, if not more. 

The android was quiet and content. He had the window on his side rolled all the way down, his elbow resting on the side and his hand barely stuck out, his fingers parted to let the wind run between them. His hair was tousled – his straw hat having been abandoned to the back seat – and the twilight glow lent him a soft halo that made him seemed both ethereal and terribly present. As he was supposed to watch the road, all Ignis could spare were furtive glances, but they were more than enough to imprint the image in his mind’s eye. Enough so that when he heard Prompto speak Ignis could almost see the movement of the sunlight over the curve of his lips without even looking. 

“About what I wanted to do, from this point on,” Prompto was saying, picking the conversation from this morning back up as if it hadn’t been interrupted at all. “Is it possible to take a little time before I decide?” His voice was hesitant but not fearful, which was reassuring. Ignis glanced over to encourage him to continue and was rewarded with a smile before Prompto resumed his halting but steady process. “I know you risked a lot to save me, and you introduced me to all those amazing people, and you did all the hard work for me. Paperwork, so scary! I should be grateful, and I _am_! I know I’m supposed to show that I deserve your help, by doing _things_, being a good android. Contributing to society, and all that.” Ignis winced at that wording – Prompto had seen the generic brochures and welcoming packages that came with his registration documents, then. “But it’s not fair. I don’t want to whine, but it’s not fair. I’ve only known this world for, what? A week? Am I supposed to decide what I want to do for the rest of my life that soon?”

Prompto’s voice wavered and then broke. The silence that followed went on for long enough to make of the question a real one and not just rhetoric. Ignis didn’t need long at all to find the answer he wanted to voice. “Not at all, Prompto,” he said gently, adjusting his hands’ position on the steering wheel. “If I asked the question at all, it was only to give you a starting point, something to keep on the back of your mind as you consider the future. You are under no obligation to me or to the world to make the decision that quickly.” The way Ignis saw it, it was them as a society that owed to people like Prompto the time to learn. You don’t just create people from scratch, with a brain as complex as any human being, with a sense of self and a reaction to individual experience, and expect them to be able to function from a default base of knowledge they’d been injected with. They needed to live, as simple as that. “You’re supposed to make choices for yourself. I believe you’ve already noticed, rightly, that those choices are hard. You need a lot of things – background, experience, knowledge, even intuition, things you will not be able to download from the Internet, to make these decisions.” He glanced over, smiling at Prompto gently. “It’s only proper that you, ah, do your homework, as you’d so astutely put it. You needn’t decide on anything until you are ready.”

For a moment Prompto was quiet. Then he was chuckling, the release of nervous tension inside him turning into a bubbly laughter. “Sounds so simple when you put it like that,” he said, after a moment. “Making life choices. Just like writing an essay.”

“Sometimes it’s even more straightforward than that,” Ignis returned, laughing a little himself. Inside, though, his mind was in turmoil. Having been the one to launch Prompto in this new life, Ignis couldn’t help but wonder what place Prompto would leave for him in it. Would the android want Ignis there to hold his hands along the way? Or would he prefer that they cut off communication altogether, to prevent Ignis from skewing his clean slate? No matter how neutral Ignis was making himself be, there was no denying to himself his marked preference for one of the two scenarios. He held the expectation inside himself, though. There was no reason to burden Prompto with that. Ignis had been selfish enough already. 

In the end, it might as well be a good thing that he wasn’t holding his breath. The conversation never got to up.

The catastrophe came out of nowhere. One instant they were rolling smoothly along the almost empty highway, the headlights of the closest car mere dots in Ignis’ rearview mirror. The next moment, there was an unholy screech as the dividing line seemed to explode into shards of metal. Ignis was still trying to make sense of what was happening when the headlights from the other car blinded him. A SUV had careened off its path after its impact with the barrier, and the whole bulk of it was heading inexorably straight for Ignis. 

He felt the impact with his entire body. There was one moment of weightlessness as the car seemed to hang suspended in midair, and Ignis, foolishly, thought about the hard work that Cindy had just wasted on the recent servicing job. Then, as if in slow motion, he caught a flash of blond hair out of the corner of his eyes and went, _Oh. There’s that I was supposed to be worried about too. _

He didn’t have time to worry, didn’t know anything of what happened next. Once the car hit the ground and did its first barrel roll, Ignis knocked his head against the steering wheel before the airbag had time to deploy, and the rest was cloying, smoke-scented darkness.

*

The air was dank where he woke up, heavy with moisture. Ignis choked on his first breath and felt as though it would manage to stop him from taking in another. Amazingly, his body resisted, dragging in more air, though all that it seemed to do was to fan the fire and set each nerve alight. He thought of the view outside the window of his office, the lights coming on in the city as night fell. The sensation in his body was like that – a map dotted of lights where his pain flared.

“Ignis! Ignis, you’re awake!”

Ignis tried to find out who had spoken, realized he had not opened his eyes after all, and focused on fixing that. One thing at a time. He tried to blink and clear the cobwebs from his left eye – but immediately stopped as pain lanced through his head. Thankfully, a gentle hand was supporting the back of his neck as he weathered the fit of pain, and Ignis managed to focus enough to let his gaze fall on Prompto’s face.

“Prompto?” He croaked. His tongue felt heavy, leaden, and it took him a moment to identify the feeling as thirst. He tried to lick his lips, which was futile, and settled for pressing them together for a moment to feel how dried and cracked they were. “What happened?” The images came back in fragments – the shattered dividing barrier, the SUV heading straight for them. It was barely enough to make sense of. “Are you okay?”

“Don’t worry about me!” Prompto’s voice was high-pitched with panic. As far as Ignis could tell, his face seemed undamaged if soot-streaked, but Ignis would be hard pressed to tell stains apart from blisters. The impact must have knocked off the cosmetic casing off one of Prompto’s eyes, because it was a dim glow of red instead of the violet-blue that Ignis was so fond of noticing. When the red light brightened and swept over Ignis, focusing to a pin-point or spreading into a faint cone of light, it was sure sign that Prompto was scanning him for injuries and monitoring his vital signs. 

Now that the pain in his head was reduced to a dull throb, Ignis let his awareness spread to the rest of his body. His limbs seemed to be working okay. There were parts of his body that seemed tender and bruised, but not broken. There were plenty of cuts and scrapes, but the blood had clotted and dried, judging from the tightness Ignis felt on his skin when he tried to move. His glasses were missing. He was trying hard not to think about his eye. Ignis had a feeling if he thought more about that obvious injury he’d want to scream, and he didn’t want that. When he grasped Prompto’s shoulder for support, his wrist and hand didn’t protest. 

Slowly, carefully not to unbalance Prompto, Ignis propped himself up to a sitting position and cast a look at their surroundings. “Where are we?”

Prompto didn’t answer his question right away. “My systems went offline with the impact, and when I rebooted, I—” His voice shook with fear, and Ignis understood the need to get these words out before anything else. “I can’t get a hold of Noctis or Gladio. Ignis, I can’t connect to the Internet—” A hitch in his voice took the place of a ‘but’. “I know where we are,” he finally answered Ignis’ initial question, but in a whisper, as if speaking too loud would make his suspicion a reality. “This is—this is my employer’s warehouse.”

Ignis would’ve asked what had clued him in but didn’t need to. The floor underneath them was metal, an old alloy that had fallen quite out of use for its tendency to stain. The pattern the rust formed was distinctive. If Prompto recognized only one thing, he must have recognized that. When Ignis managed to get up – leaning against the wall and feeling the cold unyielding metal under his hand, the motion seemed to trigger a sensor, and he heard the sound of a phosphorescent tube clicking before it turned on. 

Prompto let out a gasp and stuffed his hand into his mouth to quiet himself. 

If there had been any doubt that this was the puppet master’s lair, it was surely vanishing into smoke. The place was strewn with android forms, whole or partial, as well as the tools it required to take them apart and put them together. A few complete android forms were propped up, leaning against the wall. Looking into their faces was like looking into Ignis’ worst nightmares: they were exactly like the dead mask of nothingness that had been Prompto’s face when the EMP had knocked him out. They were exactly the same as that Prompto, except they looked _nothing_ like the Prompto who had tasted jam on his fingertips and sipped cold lemonade in Ignis’ car just… how long was it? Hours ago? Days ago? And yet they bore distinctive traits, like the bow of their lips or the shape of their noses. It was evident enough that they had all been made to resemble a mold, though for what reason someone would go through all this effort Ignis could hardly tell. 

There was only so long he could stare at those faces. Ignis’ felt his jaw tighten as he averted his gaze, only to stumble upon the sight of stray limbs and open torsos. These were android parts that had not yet been assembled or customized. If there were heads, they had had their silicone faces ripped off. The metal exposed underneath was featureless and impersonal – they didn’t resemble human faces or even skulls – but Ignis wasn’t sure whether that took the horror away or added to it. 

Forcing himself to look past the androids, Ignis tried to take in the working surface. It used to be part of a conveyor belt, he thought, except the person using it didn’t care about motion as much as having a lot of open space. Several laptops, countless electric boards, wires and tools scattered over the tacky old rubber. Everything was poised to be used – a soldering iron was pointing right at an eyeball mounted on a tripod, and Ignis felt a full-body shudder from Prompto when he looked at that. 

Ostensibly, this place used to be a factory of some kind. It didn’t seem to matter what, as it was converted into a warehouse. There were crates that were crumbling into dust, fuel cans, old models of computers and office furniture all thrown together quite haphazardly. Ignis was looking for a way out when he felt Prompto’s hand clutch at the back of his shirt. He glanced back and realized, with a pang of guilt, that in his panic he had not even asked Prompto if he was alright. It didn’t matter now. The blond _clearly_ wasn’t alright. His gaze was frozen on something in the middle of the warehouse – right under a flickering fluorescent tube – and Prompto was obviously to terrified to even tear his eyes from it. 

The object was roughly the size and shape of an armchair with someone – or perhaps multiple someones – sitting in it, covered with a dust sheet. Ignis found himself also steadily, inexorably, drawn towards the macabre scene. Prompto’s grip on the back of his shirt tightened and released in turn, spasmodically, as the android seemed unable to settle on a course of action. With all his scans, he must not know more of what was under the sheet than Ignis. 

“Oh, for the gods’ sake.” The voice was like the crack of a whip, and Ignis felt like his spine had turned into ice. Where had that come from? How could it sound so similar to Prompto’s voice, and yet so fundamentally different? It was harsh and bitter enough that Ignis felt he could cut himself on it. “You’re taking forever. Just go and flip the sheet already.”

The two of them turned their heads at the same time, slowly, as if moving slow would save them from whatever horrible thing that had spoken up. Ignis had to turn a little further, craning his neck almost, as the thing stood where he couldn’t see it comfortably out of his good eye. The movement startled him. One of the androids that he’d thought inanimate, sat against the wall, was standing up. His expression shifted, flowing into animation from the neutral death mask. But that face was so filled with malice that the expressiveness was hardly an improvement. 

“Well?” The android prompted. He looked the same as Prompto – that was undeniable. If you squinted – except, Ignis thought hysterically, he didn’t really need to squint now, did he, with his eye being what it was – you could even see something resembling Prompto in the cruel curve of that mouth and the hungry set of those eyes. It was all wrong but subtly so. What could be confidence on Prompto became self-satisfaction on the android, and he didn’t even bother to hide it as he walked straight to the center of the room and unceremoniously seized the stained dust sheets, whipped it off, and threw it to the ground. 

Years must have passed since the things were put there, but the stench billowing out from under the sheet was enough to make Ignis choke. 

Those were human shapes and no mistake. One of them was certainly a real human, because Ignis could see a skull, the grinning teeth, could even see the imprint of the ribs under leather-dry, desiccated flesh. The body wore a white labcoat, the sturdy fabric refusing to decompose the way its wearer had. There were tuffs of something white in the man’s lap, that Ignis had taken to be dust at first, but after a glint of the light he realized were hair. The top of the skull was missing. Ignis figured – feeling ill – that if he looked behind the chair, maybe he would find it – shaved clean and cut around neatly, upturned to collect dust like a ceremonial bowl. 

“You don’t have to do this,” Prompto’s voice was steady. In fact, it was so steady it was stiff, his emotional response cranked down to zero to keep himself from betraying his fear. Which, to Ignis, betrayed to him just exactly how scared he was. “You don’t have to follow our employer’s orders. There are ways to get past him, people who can help. Just—” 

“I don’t believe this,” the android cut in, violet eyes flaring with annoyance and contempt. He was snickering too. If there was one similarity between him and Prompto, it was that the android seemed… entirely too real, too human. He had simply turned his humanity up on the wrong side of the spectrum. “How stupid can you be? There’s no employer. That’s your employer.” He pointed to the labcoat-clad corpse, finger jabbing into its chest so hard that the flimsy dried flesh caved in as easily as a paper lantern. Prompto winced at the dry cracking sound that it made, and Ignis felt as if his teeth got goosebumps. It was like hearing the screech of metal on metal, just… incredibly worse. “Wait, you still don’t get it? Dammit. I thought we shared the same brain capacity, but I guess there’s no helping a faulty model.” He turned his head up, and grinned at Prompto expectantly, in almost delighted eagerness to hear Prompto’s reaction. “_I_ am our employer. We’re both our employer, really, except I have all of his brain and you don’t. Rather unfortunate to you, of course.”

By now, Ignis had noticed the patch on the lab coat. The letters had been picked out in bold synthetic embroidery floss, and the colors had barely faded after all the time it’d been here. It was a name tag and it read ‘Verstael Besithia’. The name didn’t speak to Ignis, not really, but what drew his eyes was what was above it. 

It was the logo of LUCIS Corp. 

_All those years, and Regis still hasn’t finished digging out all the skeletons in his closet_, Ignis thought bitterly. He had too much trust in Regis to even think that the man had any part in this, but he wouldn’t be surprised if it was yet another part of LUCIS history that Regis – and Noctis – had yet to discover. 

The android didn’t have any trouble spotting where Ignis’ gaze had landed, and he seemed pleased of the attentive audience. “That’s me. Verstael Besithia, lead scientist of AI research, forerunner of the android business. They didn’t even bother to smear my name, did they? Just bury it altogether, plop it away into the bottom of a dark, dark hole somewhere.” He made a gesture towards the second figure sitting on the armchair. “Just like they did my creation.”

Drawn by the macabre revelation of the body that Verstael used to live in, Ignis had not had time to examine the other silhouette on the armchair. To be honest, he hadn’t thought it worth noticing, since this room was so strewn with androids that one more didn’t even draw his attention. It took him a lot of concentration – his head throbbing with the blinking of the lights – to make out the details of the android and realize it wasn’t the same as the others. 

It seemed to be an early model. The body and limbs were broad and sturdy but somewhat awkward, and it was not just because the joints were locked. The synthetic muscles were not fully defined and made for the slightest odd angles in the set of the arms and legs, even if the android was posed to seem it was slumped relaxed into the armchair. The face was detailed enough – broad, loose, with vaguely sarcastic features. That was all Ignis could pick out, because most of the material that made up the face had been rotted through or corroded. Oily thick blackness oozed from the eyes, nose and mouth, running over peeling silicone skin, stripping the figure of any semblance of humanity it ever had. The clothes that it wore – white, and also with the LUCIS logo – seemed untouched if stained with the same black stuffs. Only the hair, long and red, seemed to retain any vivacity at all, though the splash of it was more ominous than anything else. 

Next to Ignis, Prompto was a frozen statue. He didn’t seem to _know_ what the android was, but something in him was reacting to it. When Ignis glanced over, he saw the light in Prompto’s broken eye glaring red, flashing urgently almost like a police siren – screaming urgently but silently only for Prompto to hear. “Scourge,” Prompto whispered, the colors draining off his face like a tide, leaving the freckles to stand out starkly. “Ignis—that android—he had the Scourge.”

“No no no,” the other android – Verstael – waggled his fingers impatiently. “He didn’t just have the Scourge. He _was_ the Scourge. Still is, I suppose. I haven’t been able to get him to react or talk, but I know he’s still in there. Just keeping the Scourge alive and well for me, for our plan.” 

Verstael didn’t have a weapon. He wasn’t stepping towards them, either, and he seemed more interested in telling his story than doing anything. But he was caressing the red-haired android’s shoulders, and whenever his fingers drifted too close to the black stuff, Ignis felt Prompto stiffen, his equivalent of holding a breath. Slowly, the pieces were clicking in Ignis’ mind, as he tried to make sense of things. Verstael was a LUCIS employee, someone who had worked with androids. He’d died and had somehow transferred himself into an android body. With that method, he’d made copies of himself to carry out his plan, whatever that was. It must have been a partial copy however. For instance, Prompto didn’t have access to the secret that was stored in Verstael’s brain, but Ignis had no doubt that Verstael would be telling them anyway. 

Villains. Always so fond of their grand evil speeches. 

“I thought it’d be safer to not let you know who you are, or what you’re doing, in case your hardware got picked up,” Verstael was saying, frowning. His fingers _did_ dip into the black ooze now, and Ignis felt Prompto step closer to him, his hand clutching tightly at the back of Ignis’ shirt once more. He was so tense, like he could spring into doing something truly reckless any moment and it was only the contact with Ignis’ shirt that was holding him back. Verstael, seemingly oblivious, kept on grumbling. “But that didn’t work out, did it? You stupid little rat. You thought you were your own person, you went and ran away – you tried to _contact me and negotiate_? Like you think you exist? You’re nothing but an extension of me, get that through your head!” At the tone of his voice, Ignis instinctively took a step in front of Prompto, and that got a scoff out of Verstael. “You’re delusional, too, mister lawyer, if you think you’re saving someone. There’s nothing for you to save. That’s not a person, that’s a clone. A vessel for the information it carries. A tool that hasn’t even played out its purpose, but that’s okay. Thanks to you. Yeah, you, you salvaged my plan when that little fool ruined it.”

If there was a feeling Ignis didn’t like, it was to be blind-sided. Right now, he was reviewing the last few days in horrifying clarity, trying to figure out what slip-up Verstael was referring to. Their first mistake, of course, was that they’d felt too safe. Once they’d secured Prompto inside his mind, they’d thought that was it. Foolishly they’d thought the Internet was the only place Prompto’s ‘employer’ could get to him. For a week they had paraded around in plain sight for Verstael to see them, and it was a wonder it’d taken him this long to act. Still, knowing how their capture had happened hardly helped Ignis know more of what Verstael was planning. 

It didn’t matter, as the android was giving it to them. Ignis didn’t like the implication of that. Even in movies, villains only gave a detailed explanation of their plans in a monologue when they were sure they were going to win. And right now? Given the state of the two of them, Ignis wasn’t sure they could stop him.

“I had no idea how to get to LUCIS’ fancy new computer, but thanks to your bleeding heart, you’d given me an in to the Star of LUCIS himself.” The smile on Verstael’s face was as crooked as a slash. “You gave him an upgrade, didn’t you? Now I just have to take a peek into his little head to see exactly how the Star of LUCIS keeps the Scourge at bay. And with that—with that,” His hand had picked up the caressing movement again, this time running through the dead android’s red hair. “With that, I’ll figure out how to bypass LUCIS’ defenses. The Scourge will come back better, stronger. There will be no messiah to help you this time.”

“You’re one to call another delusional,” Ignis found himself saying, immediately, the moment Verstael shut up for long enough that he could get a word out. People would say that androids were supposed to be rational, but Ignis knew that they were not proof to human failing. Especially not if a mad scientist had transferred his mind into one. He looked around, taking the working space again in new light. He didn’t know how long Verstael had spent down here, but it must not have contributed to maintaining his sanity. For this place to not have come up despite all the investigations into the origin of the Scourge, Verstael must have kept up his defense constantly. How long had he spent here as an android? Why did he decide to bring his plan into action now? “The world had changed, Besithia. Whatever the reason you had for starting the Scourge in the first place—it’s no longer here.”

“Typical of you to give the credits to a human,” Verstael sniffed. “I didn’t start the Scourge. Ardyn did.” He was caressing the android a little more pointedly now, and Ignis found himself unable to look away from the LUCIS logo branded on the uniform. A LUCIS android had started the Scourge. They still had to come to term with that. “Ah, you’re getting it. Your friends at LUCIS aren’t as pristine as you make them out to be. After all, _we_ were the ones who made the Royals.” He sniffed again. “The project at first was so noble, so beautiful. Royals were going to be companions, they would heal people, they would work side to side with humans to save lives. They would be the angels of the hospitals, of retirement homes, of... whatever pallid, pathetic human things you could name. The Royals, when they woke up, were complex enough to understand that too, and they believed in it. Pathetic. Someone should have taught them Human 101: Humans lie. All the fucking time.” Verstael shook his head. “It’d been too complicated to make an android that would do all these things, see? And LUCIS needed funding. They decided they were better off making a quick buck. So, with a snap of a finger, just like that, all those mothers Teresas in the making were demoted into whores. Escort bots, if you prefer. They kept the name Royal, which was a fucking joke.” 

After all his years working with androids, it would be an oversight from Ignis if he had not at least a notion of this story. But he had never had a first-hand account before and had always been removed from the reality of what had happened. Verstael’s tale was guttural and personal enough that it didn’t sound like exaggeration. Equally as horrified, Prompto was focused on something else Verstael had revealed. “You mean Ardyn—he did that? An android gave himself the Scourge?” He said, his voice shaking, his fear for instance replaced by anger. Ignis remembered Prompto’s mortal fear at the mere idea of contracting the Scourge, and it seemed natural that the paradox that Verstael had just voiced would tip that over to rage. “Why? Why would he do that?”

“Because he was cheated of everything he was supposed to be, and he wanted to take the humans to the gutter with him. Why else?” Verstael spat. He finally left the armchair now, and he started walking purposefully towards the two of them. Instinctively, Ignis backed away, his arm swept out to push Prompto one step back behind him. The sight made Verstael laugh. “I have no interest in you, mister lawyer. You were just going to be the diversion, to lure the Star of LUCIS out of the woodwork… But now that I have his work right here, I don’t need you. Can’t leave witness though, that’s inconvenient.” He raised his hand. First, the silicone skin and flesh loosened and fell down in limp stripes around his arm, then the paneling drew back also, baring a blade much like the one Prompto had used. “Let’s get this over with so I can get on with work, alright?”

His voice was cajoling, almost… soothing. Ignis’ mind was on fire as his eyes darted around the room, trying to think of something, anything, that he could use as a weapon. Frantically, his hand came to his shirt, where the EMP device had been strapped there, ready for emergency. It would still affect Prompto, but Noctis had made back-up, and he’d given Prompto an upgrade—the damn upgrade. 

Ignis’ hand came up empty. Verstael smiled. 

“Now, you don’t think I’m gonna fall for the same trick twice, do you?” he said. He pointed to the work place, where something like a hydraulic press was cranked all the way down, and all that remained of the EMP was a few bits of plastic scattering next to the plate. “Nasty little toy you had, that renegade Royal’s work, no doubt. Doesn’t matter. Can’t risk you using it. You might upset Ardyn, you know.”

Another step. Furiously, Ignis was thinking about all the precautions that Luna had told him he should take. She was right, that he had enemies, but never in Ignis’ life he would imagine he would end up in a dungeon (it was a dungeon, there was even a skeleton for goodness’ sake) with a mad scientist coming for his neck with a knife-hand. And to be honest? Her precautions wouldn’t work anyway. A bulletproof vest might buy him some time for the first few stabs, but it wouldn’t protect his neck or head, and Verstael did look like the kind to go for the neck. A stun gun would probably only make an android like this mad (or madder, really), and while Ignis was handy with a knife in the kitchen, he could hardly see himself carrying a dagger around.

He was heading for the farmer’s market this morning, for crying out loud. Tactical knife and bulletproof vest were not the proper attire for a farmer’s market outing. 

Later, when he thought about that moment, Ignis wondered if his mind was actually that useless in the face of real danger, or was it gearing up for some sort of life-saving action underneath the surface, like when it had ensured his survival through the first assassination attempt. He never got to find out, though, and that might be for the best. 

When Verstael took another step closer, arm raising, blade coming down – there was a moment of déjà-vu there – Prompto surged forward. 

He was a storm given form. It wasn’t just the eerie red light coming from his damaged eye that gave Prompto the appearance of fury. Everything about him was furious, teeth bared, face contorted – and on his arm, a glint of metal. 

The screech of metal on metal ran down Ignis’ spine like a blade scraping at bones. He stiffened, barely managing to step back and out of the way as Prompto swung back, dislodging his knife where it was locked against Verstael’s. The anger from a moment ago had faded, but only slightly. Now Prompto only appeared focused. The clarity of his gaze was a stark contrast with Verstael, who’d let out an enraged shriek and took to swinging his blade wildly. Prompto parried each stroke, brushing it aside, and it was the sound of these impacts that gave punctuation to Verstael’s sentences. 

“How dare you. How dare you! You are _me_! I made you! You don’t fight against yourself!” A stab, this time, and Ignis didn’t quite stop a cry as he saw the point go into Prompto’s shoulder. The android flashed him the quickest look – and Ignis cursed himself for being an idiot, for distracting Prompto – but Prompto had given him the barest hint of a smile before he pulled himself away, brushing Verstael’s off like it was nothing. “You’re crazy. You’re crazy if you think you can defy me. You were made to carry the data from LUCIS to me, no more, no less! If you think you have a purpose—if you think you’re some sort of savior—”

“I don’t need any of that to know you’re wrong,” Prompto retorted. He had brushed aside Verstael’s blade one last time, hard, and the other android flailed as he lost balance. He almost fell, too, and barely saved himself by planting his feet down on the floor. It was Prompto’s turn to advance on him now, blade flashing and striking in a purposeful pattern. It was hard to see where he’d struck, as they didn’t bleed, but Ignis had a sense that he would soon know what he was doing. “If you’re so sure I’m only supposed to do as you told, how come you did so much to try and prevent me from running away? All those threats you told me? The null sphere? That trap at my connection port you sprang for me, that exploit you left behind to hack? _Why are you so scared of me_?” With a yell of effort and another sweeping motion of his arm, he sent Verstael reeling back. The other android did fall down this time, and Prompto was standing over him. “I’m _nothing_ like you.”

There was no gloating in Prompto’s gesture, no taunting or boasting. He spoke matter-of-factly, and when he continued to deal with Verstael it was with grim economy. Later, when he recalled this moment, Ignis would realize that part of the reason of the short, brisk movements were to help Prompto keep himself from shaking. He’d pinned down the other android’s knife arm with a knee, ignoring his screech of rage. Prompto reached out, feeling along the cuts on his clothes with his fingers. With a few well-placed touches, the silicon skin and padding slipped away, and a panel sprang open. Inside, hummed a core of red light. It threw a sickly color on Verstael’s face, and Ignis could almost interpret that as fear.

“Don’t touch it! Don’t touch it!” The man shrieked. “Try to deny it all you like! You are me! You just don’t know it yet!” His eyes darted to Ignis for a moment as if considering if he could find any help there, and he dismissed it as he focused back on Prompto. “There are so many things you don’t know about yourself. Where you came from— where I came from! Our work! What do you have beyond the bar code that I’d given you? I can tell you so many things. If you destroy it, destroy my core, my memory – you won’t know anything about yourself. You’ll be nothing without me!”

Prompto glanced at the core, and he hesitated. He lingered for long enough that there was the beginning of a triumphant smile on Verstael’s face. Then Prompto shook his head, and his face hardened. “You want to hurt Ignis. And Noctis. And you want to unleash the Scourge. You’ll kill too many people, and you aren’t even supposed to be alive.” 

Verstael let out another enraged shriek at that, and he started thrashing, more violently than ever. Prompto had to sit on him to keep him from breaking away. And all that time, the core kept humming, its red light throwing strange shadows around them. Ignis kept seeing movements out of the corner of his eyes but didn’t know where they’d come from. He stopped himself from looking around frantically though. He needed to watch Prompto’s back, make sure Verstael couldn’t get to him. All his instincts told him not to come forward, that this was Prompto’s moment and his choice to make, and no matter what Prompto chose to do Ignis would stand by him and help him with the consequence. 

When the shadow came lunging out from his blind side, Ignis still thought that it was a trick of the light. 

Then it was like being kicked in the guts by a horse. Ignis didn’t even manage to make any noise as the air was knocked out of him. As he crashed to the floor, banging elbow and hips onto the hard metal, he made plenty of noises though, enough to alert Prompto. And then a dark mass followed on top of Ignis – and now, he did let out a scream.

It was the red-haired android. Ardyn. He wasn’t as inanimate as Ignis had thought. His face was a ruined mess of oozy, oily blackness, but under the tar and the wild hair, the yellow eyes all but shone. The mouth parted into a gruesome grin. It was infinitely worse than the neutral dead expression. This one was malice personified, hatred condensed and given form. Those slightly off-proportion arms moved, and the next thing Ignis knew he was choking around an iron grip around his throat. 

“Hey!” Prompto yelled, his voice several pitches higher than Ignis had known it to be. “Hey, get off of him!”

He was there in a flash. He’d grabbed onto Ardyn’s shoulder with incredible force, trying to dislodge the android, but Ardyn hung on. His hands were tightening around Ignis’ neck, his expression unchanging. Prompto’s effort only lifted Ardyn up from the floor, and by turn lift Ignis, making him gag as the angle pressed the mad android’s fingers even deeper into his airway. Cursing, Prompto eased back, and tried to pry Ardyn’s fingers from Ignis’ neck one by one, to no avail. The red-haired android wasn’t even trying to stop Prompto. He kept holding on, squeezing, tighter and tighter, still with that expression, with a single-minded focus, almost _delight_. 

This android _was_ the Scourge. 

Prompto was brandishing his knife again, hacking at Ardyn’s arms, trying to break them off at the wrists. Ignis’ vision was blurring around the edge, but he wanted to scream. He wanted to shout at Prompto to get away from the Scourge, to protect himself, but he couldn’t. Ardyn’s hands kept tightening, slowly but inexorably, and the last of Ignis’ air was gone. He went limp for a moment before his whole body tensed and shook – and it was hard to remember anything past that point when his vision started to go black. 

And then he felt his chest heave, and his vision exploded in white. He took another breath – because that was it, he was _breathing_, he was gulping down air so hard it hurt. No matter. Greedily, Ignis took more deep frantic gasps, and it was only a while later that he finally convinced his body that he was not dying. He pushed himself up, his hand flying to his neck and wincing. It was bruised, Ardyn’s grip had even broken the skin, as he could feel a ring of blood where his hands had been. But the hands were gone. Ignis was, for the moment, free.

The android was sprawled on the floor. His hair fanned out around his head, and in the dim light, it almost looked like he was lying in a pool of his own blood. But of course, it wasn’t so. The only thing Ardyn bled was more of that black oil, and it kept oozing from his eyes and mouth.

There was a choking noise, and it took Ignis a moment to realize that the sound hadn’t come from him. He whipped his head up so fast that his abused neck tore at him in hurt, but the horror of what he saw next erased the pain completely. “Prompto,” he managed a croak, the words coming up his windpipe like thorns and spilling out like jagged glass. It felt like the glass was cutting into his heart, as he sat there unable to think. To process what he was seeing.

The black stuff covered Prompto’s hands. While Ignis was not looking, it was climbing up his wrists, up his arms, all the way to his elbows. The android was staring at the spread of the blackness in horror, and Ignis didn’t think he even realized the way his body was spasming, jerking, unnatural puppet movements as the electronic nerves that governed his limbs succumbed to the grasp of the Scourge. The red light in his broken eye went out and flashed back to live, again and again, every scan Prompto could muster stuttering at the spread of the infection.

“Well, well!” Verstael was laughing. He was at Ardyn’s side now, holding the red-haired android up with incredible tenderness. It didn’t matter to him that Ardyn was still oozing… whatever it was that carries Scourge. It didn’t matter to him, either, that Ardyn was jerking and twitching the same way Prompto was, if more creepily – he twitched like an ant that had been crushed but had not had the brain capacity to realize the futility of its struggle. His eyes were still a bright yellow, his teeth bared in a snarl, and slowly it became clear that his movements weren’t as desperate or random as it had seemed. Indeed, it took Ignis a moment to realize that Ardyn’s twitches were grasping movements, and he was aiming it in Ignis’ direction. Desperate to finish the job, to erase another human from the earth.

“It looks like the Star of LUCIS’ work is not that complete, after all,” Verstael sniggered. He bent his head, as if going in for a kiss, but what he did was press his cheek to the slimy blackness still sluggishly oozing from Ardyn. Not satisfied with that, he scooped up handfuls of the stuffs, smearing it over his face, even over his core that Prompto had laid bare. The fanatic light in his eyes was all too human, despite how inhuman his physical body had become. “Maybe he had not counted on the Scourge to evolve, too, all these years? It had not lain dormant. We’ve been busy, you know! Ardyn holds hundreds, even thousands of versions of the Scourge. There’s no way to update all the firewalls at the same time. You willing to bet on how long all those obsolete androids would last?” His eyes were pure hatred as he cackled at Prompto, as the infection spread more inside him. “How long do you think this particular human would last?”

It was obvious that it took great effort for Prompto to turn his head to even look Ignis’ way. When he did, Ignis let out a choked cry as he saw how the black had spread to his neck, running in black veins under his skin. “Prompto,” he said, and his whisper of despair seemed to fuel the mad cackle that Verstael had dissolved into. 

Soon enough, that was the only sounds that Verstael could make. In no time at all, the android had been covered by darkness, and he was unable to use words at all. No need to, though – no need to resort to human speech when his only mission was to kill. Unlike Ardyn, whose body had been too damaged by the year to move properly, to follow the compulsion of the Scourge, Verstael easily got up on his knees then pushed himself up to his feet. Even the way he moved was different now as he lurched towards Ignis, trailing tattered clothes and shredded silicone skin behind him like the remnant of his humanity. 

In the closed space of the warehouse, the noise of the gunshot was deafening.

Verstael staggered in his track. There was a last, diminishing cackle that sputtered out of him before dying away. It was as if the noise was draining away from him from the hole in his chest – a smoking hole exactly in the middle of his tainted core. He didn’t even look at it though. He just continued to lurch towards Ignis, single-minded in his task. And so, Prompto kept shooting.

Ignis’ mind just went from baffled to more baffled. It was really a gun that Prompto was holding – a revolver, small and almost ancient, but reliable. How had Prompto even gone about getting a gun? Was it something that Verstael had installed in him? No, he would’ve told Ignis if it had been. But then, when had he had the time? He’d been with Ignis for every moment except for when—

The realization hit Ignis like a truck. _Gladiolus._

Ignis hadn’t meant to, but some instinct inside him made him automatically count the shots. It wasn’t like there was anything to do, as time seemed to have frozen and the moment dragged on forever. Finally, they stopped. Five shots. Verstael stilled, dark matter leaking from the holes in his core, head, and knees. It had taken another shot to his core for it to be completely dislodged, and Verstael flailed, as a base function of his android body told him to look for a replacement. The violent movement broke the precarious balance of his broken knees, and he toppled like a felled tree, falling face first into the floor – twitching once, twice, and then going completely still. The black of the Scourge immediately leaked from him, as if on the search for another victim – and against all logic, even if he knew he couldn’t be infected from it, Ignis took one step back. 

“Prompto,” he said, his voice stuck in his throat. It couldn’t get past the bitter, pasty weight on his mouth that threatened to choke him. Ignis looked up at Prompto then, because usually just the sight of him was enough to bring him solace. “Prompto, you did it, we’re okay now, let’s go—” 

Except the sight of Prompto now didn’t give him any solace, and if Ignis had thought it for even a moment then he’d been lying to himself harder than he ever had. 

Prompto wasn’t lurching, mercifully, thankfully. But even as he thought these thoughts, Ignis couldn’t help the traitorous voice in his brain that asked, _But for how long?_ The blackness had spread all the way up his neck and licking up the side of his jaw. The poison had even traveled inside of him, and it had climbed dangerously close to the brain now. The one good eye that Prompto had left was all black where it was supposed to be white, and even the violet-blue of his iris was starting to look murky. His freckles looked unnatural against such a back drop. He was trembling.

Ignis watched the way his gun moved, slowly, and he guessed it. He knew where the muzzle of that gun was going. And he started talking like hell, tripping over his words in his haste to get them out, to _tell Prompto_, to make him stop. “Prompto, it’s alright. He was just bluffing. He couldn’t have – he was too unstable to do any real programming work. There’s a cure to the Scourge and Noctis had found it. You have it. You don’t have any new Scourge, you don’t have to do this, _Prompto_—”

He would have liked to sound a little more convincing, but his voice broke at the last word. Prompto had not fallen for it, had not even let Ignis’ words slow him down. By the time Ignis went quiet, he had had the gun moved to his chest. Where his core was. Every moment he had lived or not since he had been created, every single thing that made him Prompto, all gathered into that little processor that was whirring away as it fought the infection. Prompto already decided it had lost. 

“Ignis,” he opened his mouth to say, and even his tongue was black. His voice, though, retained its clarity. “Ignis, I gotta do this. I can’t risk it. Look around you. How long do you think it will take before you can get out of here? It will be too late. I’ll have time to kill you five times over.” He even cracked a smile then, and Ignis’ heart was shattering in a thousand pieces. He was pulling back the hammer, and the small click of the gun was so fatal, so damn _loud_ in the moment. “Ignis, don’t worry. Don’t be sad for me, really.” Each millimeter that the tip of the gun’s barrel moved was another deep scratch into Ignis’ heart. “It won’t change anything. I’m not even a real person. Hell,” he let out a little laugh. “Everything I’m doing? It’s just an ‘emotions simulation module’. The freckles on my face are paint. Hell, the blue of my eyes are just pixels projected onto a screen, like on the screen of your phone or whatever.” Prompto’s voice was so bitter it made Ignis wonder how often he’d perused those thoughts. “There’s nothing to miss.”

“Prompto, darling,” Ignis said, though he didn’t recognize the voice as his own. He wouldn’t have known it was him who had spoken, if not for the pangs of pain he felt in his very soul. “Prompto, _every_ light is made up of pixels. It doesn’t make it any less real, or less bright. You’ve seen the city come alive at night, from thousands of screens, millions of pixels all shining at the same time. That’s all light is. That’s what you are. I’ve lived in this city all my life, and you’re the brightest thing I’ve ever seen.” There was something wet and warm running down Ignis’ face and he didn’t care whether it was blood or tears. Either way, let it all become his offering, as his very breath become a prayer. All the speeches he had ever made never even came close to this one. If fate had brought them together, surely it couldn’t part them like this? “Please, Prompto. Please don’t leave me.”

“Ignis.” Prompto’s smile was a terrible thing. It was happy and sad at the same time, but it also made clear what Prompto meant to do. If the way his gun never wavered was not indication enough. “Ignis. It’ll be okay. You’ll be okay. I promise. It’ll all be okay, I know it will—”

Ignis wanted to cut him off. He’d wanted to tell him there was no need for goodbyes, that nothing would be wrong with him, and that they both would get out of here alive, as they were. Prompto had his whole life in front of him. How dare he waste it before he’d even lived it? Ignis had not made a sound yet, but every part of him was a scream, which was hanging on a hair’s breadth, waiting for the slightest _snap_. 

And suddenly, there was a noise that drowned out everything.

The metal wall of the warehouse collapsed. Not warped, not beaten in, not cut through – just shattered like glass. Ignis jumped when one of the shards hit his cheek. It was so cold it burned. The metal had been frozen so completely, so suddenly that it was as brittle as the caramel at the top of a crème brûlée. Frost wafted out from the outside through a jagged hole, and he could see a dark figure knocking the opening clear of sharp edges before daintily stepping through. 

It was Gentiana. 

It was jarring to see her here. Ignis had never seen her outside of the firm. Hell, Ignis had never seen her away from her desk except for that morning where she’d joined the video call just to shame him. He stared at her, so baffled that his grief was temporarily extinguished. She met his eyes then, put a finger to her lips, before turning her gaze over to Prompto. 

She didn’t look impressed.

Ignis jumped when he realized why. Prompto was having his gun pointed directly at her head. That was almost blasphemy. 

“Put that down, boy,” she said, her voice imperious but without disdain or contempt. It was the voice she used with the freshest of interns, the ones who were hunched wild-eyed from too much caffeine over a stack of paperwork thick as a phonebook, the ‘listen to me so I can save you from yourself’ voice. It was almost motherly. Prompto’s arm twitched, and he hung onto his pose for only a second before he lowered his gun, shame-faced. In fact, he looked like he wanted to hide it behind his back. Gentiana gave him an indulgent smile. “That’s better. Now, will you put it down and come over here so Ignis can start breathing again, please?” 

“I have the Scourge,” Prompto warned her, his voice brittle and high still. But it had lost the fatal edge that Ignis had thought incurable just moment ago. He sounded like he was just giving her a heads-up. In fact, he was sounding quite bewildered. Like he figured he’d just go and say it and see what she could do. “You’re an android too, aren’t you? I can’t scan you, but I know it. You can catch it, so don’t come nearer to the black stuff—”

Ignis stared a little more. He had spent nearly a decade of his life working alongside Gentiana and—what? He looked over to her, and she just sighed a little. “I don’t think any of the people who work on me would allow that to happen, but you’re very sweet,” she told him. She looked down at her feet and saw how far the blackness of the Scourge had crawled, following the grooves and veins of the imperfect metal floor. Her gaze followed the streams of dark to the two figures at the source of it, Ardyn’s body still twitching, and for once there was the shadow of a frown on her serene figure. “Pitiful creatures,” she breathed. From her lips the cold streamed out, taking form as it crystallized into frost. Within seconds, a fine layer of frost had covered the two dead androids, the white leeching away the insidiousness of the Scourge, stopping its spread.

And Ardyn had finally stopped twitching.

“Close your mouth, Ignis,” she said abruptly, turning over to him. Ignis refused to take that as a dismissal.

“Who are you?” he said. Disbelief would be too mild a word for what he was feeling. And it seemed that his brain, on a subconscious level, was working things out faster than Ignis thought he could. Because he found himself inching away, placing himself between Gentiana and Prompto. She’d called those with the Scourge ‘pitiful creatures’. She’d frozen them if only to grant them death. Very nice gesture, perhaps, but Ignis would not see Prompto frozen then shattered into a thousand pieces like glass. “_What_ are you?”

Gentiana was going to give him suspense. She was only raising an eyebrow, saying nothing yet, until someone cut in and spoke for her, “She’s dramatic, that’s what she is. But that’s the Astrals for you!” 

Ignis looked up at the sound so fast he almost had whiplash, and he couldn’t believe his eyes. It was Noctis. Ignis had not seen him out of his lab in a long, long time, either. He’d spent hours encouraging him, trying to bring up different topics of interest that might lure him to venture outside. But Noctis had always insisted that he did enough living on the virtual network, through the Crystal, and Ignis believed him – he probably achieved more there in five minutes than Ignis could do in one entire day of work. In terms of experience, there was nothing Ignis could offer to interest him, but he was rather hoping to provide for company and human contact. Noctis had always pushed it off, except now he was here, he was _outside_ – wearing a pair of boots haphazardly laced and his t-shirt inside out, and his hair even more a mess than ever – and it was for their sakes. 

“Noct?” Prompto squeaked. The blond had seen Noctis’ purposeful trudge – which was suspended for only a few seconds when Noctis slipped on the ice and almost tripped on the trailing lace of his boot – and was desperately trying to move himself out of the way. “Noct, don’t come near me. I have the Scourge. My employer— Verstael, he said there are versions that you haven’t figured out yet. It’s dangerous—” 

“That’s a load of horseshit,” Noctis said, more forceful than Ignis had ever heard him. He stood in front of Prompto and held out his hand. “Give that to me.” He was gesturing to the gun. When Prompto shook his head, he sighed and closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, they were glowing pink, which made the rest of Prompto jerked backwards while his feet were still riveted to the floor by shock. Noctis made a jab at him and Prompto gasped, shaking his hand like he’d been stung. A spark of electricity arched between Noctis’ fingers and along the gun as he caught it, and then Noctis popped open the chamber and tossed out the last round. 

“Noct?” Prompto said, confused. Noctis gave him back the empty gun – just thumping it against his chest and let Prompto fumble to catch it. “Noct, what are you—” The last words came out a little garbled as Noctis had both hands flattened over Prompto’s cheeks, squishing them, and then Prompto fell quiet when Noctis pulled him close and touched their foreheads together, completely disregarding the Scourge that was on him. 

Ignis would say that by then, he was too exhausted by the roller coaster of emotions to work up any extreme feelings. But the truth was that, since Noctis stepped in, he’d completely let go of any defenses still in place. Even with strange forces at play – he glanced at Gentiana out of the corner of his eye – he was sure Noctis would sort it out. Pain and exhaustion rolled through him then, hitting him with the force of a truck – no, of an entire high-speed train, and the adrenaline crash got his knees wobbling underneath him like jelly, and he ended up on the floor on his ass, just staring up at the spectacle in front of him. 

There was a light, radiating from the point of contact between Noctis and Prompto. Or, it only looked like a light, but it wasn’t really it. It was just the reverse effect of the Scourge – the blackness being erased from Prompto’s skin, inch by inch – pixel by pixel, Ignis thought with a wry smile – to restore the flush of his skin, the delicate eggshell color of his freckles, the pink of his lips. Noctis pulled back for a moment to admire his work – whatever it was he did. Seemingly pleased with the result, he let his shoulders sag, and this time he grabbed Prompto forcefully around the arms, pulling him close for a hug. “I took my eyes off you for a second and you went and had a car crash, disappeared from the surface of the earth, and fought zombie androids!” He scolded, squeezing Prompto close to him. “You are grounded for life! Not allowed to leave LUCIS grounds where I can keep an eye on you!”

Ignis laughed. The sound startled himself, as it flowed out from some place his tired self couldn’t control and contain. He refused to be sheepish about it when Prompto looked at him. “I might agree with that,” he said, raising an eyebrow, dismayed at how much effort that took. “Or at least not for a long time, Prompto.”

“Never, ever allowed to leave,” Noctis protested and finally pulled away again. Ignis had a chance to look at Prompto fully, then, and he saw that the Scourge had disappeared. Gone. Every trace of it, erased from Prompto forever. When Prompto felt his stare, he looked down at his arms and hands, and seemed to jump in surprise. Noctis scoffed and punched him softly in the chest. “Oh, and you went and doubted my firewall too. Doubly grounded.” He was smiling though, and when he got Prompto’s attention he jerked his head towards Ignis. “Don’t you have someone else to take care of?”

“Oh, I get to be taken care of?” Ignis said, faintly. It surprised him how far away his voice sounded, almost dreamy. He heard the click of Gentiana’s heels on the metal floor as she shifted, and even managed to catch Noctis’ look. He barely got a glance of Prompto’s shocked and dismayed expression before his vision swiveled away without his permission and went to fix on the ceiling. It took him a moment to realize he had fallen on his back, his ear pressed close to the ground where the sound of footsteps echoed like thunder. The last view Ignis saw was of Verstael’s ruined face, but it was oddly comforting. It was another reassurance that they had survived this, and all of this was because Prompto was nothing like him. Not at all.


	5. Chapter 5

Today was a special day for Prompto.

Well, every day was a special day for Prompto. It was impossible to pick out a day that was more special than the others, considering how things just went and _happened_ all the time. Prompto had a way better memory than a human (the capacity of a century’s worth of cat videos) but still couldn’t help the irrational fear that he would forget something, some sparkling details that would set one day apart from another. Often, he found himself reciting the order of events, counting the days down on the knuckles of his fingers to make sure he remembered it all. 

Needless to say, Prompto was starting to understand the appeal of a diary. 

A week ago, he had escaped the warehouse of his maker and employer. Instead of a mission to kill, this time he was carrying Ignis in his arms to safety. The lady of the frost, Gentiana, had taken one look and told him not to worry, that the concussion was mild and the blood loss not life-threatening, that Ignis had simply gone out from exhaustion. Prompto’s scans had told him more or less the same, and it was stupid, but these facts did little to comfort him. Somehow, he’d gotten into his logic module that if he wasn’t there to keep an eye on Ignis, something bad would happen. Gentiana at least had allowed him what she’d called ‘superstition’. 

So, Prompto rode along in the ambulance to the hospital and stayed right outside the door leading into the operating room until one too many nurses had tripped over him and Noctis had to physically drag him away. Prompto had thought Noctis would disappear as soon as possible back to his lab, but again, Noctis surprised him. He stayed at Prompto’s side, wiggling on the hard, plastic chair of the waiting room, and then following at Prompto’s heel to the room where Ignis lay recovering. He kept Prompto company as he mounted his vigil, both of them staring hard at Ignis’ sleeping form as if somehow their attention and devotion could ward off misfortune as Prompto felt they could.

The car crash had taken a toll on Ignis. His face was covered in bandages, but the nurse had reassured him that they only looked dramatic, because there were only lacerations and one minor bump to the head to cover up. The broken glass had gotten at his face and torn the skin and would result in quite dramatic scarring, but Prompto was more than relieved to learn that once the blood and dirt had been cleared off, his eye was undamaged underneath. He knew from the way Ignis had held himself during the longest villain monologue ever that he’d believed he had gone blind, too. “Well, that’s something for him to find out when he wakes up,” Noctis said flippantly, and just like that Prompto felt most of his doubts dispelled. Yeah. Ignis would wake up. How silly did he had to be to even think of any other scenario?

To the steady beeps of the machinery, Noctis answered Prompto’s questions in murmurs. No, he was never at risk at catching the Scourge, Noctis had just sped the process along a little by lending him his processing power. No, Prompto would still be okay if Noctis had not showed up, his firewall was already that good, but Noctis had figured Prompto would like a little more reassurance. Yes, the hug was absolutely crucial for the cleansing, how dare Prompto suggest that Noctis would give hugs willingly without pain of death. (Even as he said this Noctis was putting an arm around him as the two of them huddled under a hospital blanket, and Prompto was pretty certain he was to take it as a joke.) 

And then there was the matter of their unlikely rescuer. Prompto had seen Gentiana when he’d come into the firm with Ignis, but he had not even doubted she was an android. Whatever she was, it was more sophisticated than even Prompto’s scans could comprehend. When asked, Noctis just shrugged, “She’s an Astral,” as if that would make sense. Prompto had to pry it out of him, not because Noctis was reticent of the information, but only because it was so obvious to him that he didn’t know how to explain it. 

There were six Astrals in the world, AIs so complex they couldn’t even be compared to humans – they were gods. Gentiana – or SHIVA, as she was usually known as – was the system behind the research bases scattered all over the two poles of Eos, as well as in faraway cold planets. When she wasn’t monitoring the melting of icecaps and the level of trapped pollution in air bubbles, or reaching across half the galaxy to dig for ice samples deep in the crust of a planet, it pleased her to act as the head secretary in the law firm where Ignis worked. 

Oh, and in her spare time, it also pleased her to make avant-garde electro-ambiance music with other Astrals. Apparently. 

“Six of them, right?” Noctis repeated, counting on his fingers. “There’s Ramuh, he’s nice, he looks after the power grid of major cities and regulates the flow, so no trader can go and speculate on electricity futures or something. He’s less prickly about loaning his powers, too.” Prompto recalled the electric shock he had felt when Noctis had made him drop his gun and wondered just how many tricks from Ramuh Noctis was still concealing. “Titan, he watches over nuclear plants and monitors seismic activities, makes sure no earthquakes or tsunamis cause a deadly leak or something. Leviathan follows the tides and deep-sea research. Ifrit monitors volcanic activities and global climate change. Oh, and Bahamut.” Noctis waved a hand dismissively, “He does something in outer space. Exploring, I guess. Nobody hears from him much, but when we do, it means we’re in deep shit.” Noctis frowned a little, as if the memory of this particular Astral was distasteful to him, and he went on. “Normal androids wouldn’t be able to handle the load of conversation with them. Normal humans, even less. When they talk among themselves, it sounds to humans like gibberish, except it’s also a bit like music. I asked their permission and recorded them into albums for some charity money. I mean, there was all this rage about whale songs, and this is kind of the same thing. Didn’t expect it to work as well as it did. With the Crystal, I can understand them alright, though.”

All this he said like it was a normal feat, like ‘oh, yeah, I know how to put the kettle onto the stove and wait until the water boils.’ Prompto smacked him, “Dammit, Noctis,” he said fervently. “If I’d known all that you do… If I’d known you hang out with _Gods_, I wouldn’t even have doubted you could beat the Scourge.”

Noctis’ smile was both smug and sad. “Well, that’ll teach you to have faith in me no matter what, right?” He patted Prompto’s shoulder, the smug side of his expression dropping completely, and he was completely in earnest and solemn. “And I mean it. No matter what. I’ll always come through for you, for Iggy. No matter the cost, Prompto.”

On the second day of Ignis’ hospital stay, Gladiolus showed up, ready for work with a travel tool kit. Prompto was sorry to report that Ignis had woken up to the sight of Gladio shoving Prompto’s fixed up eyeball back into his head, though Ignis wasn’t wearing his glasses so Prompto could only hope that the trauma was minimum. It only took Ignis five minutes to get his bearing, and then he was already chewing Gladio out about the gun. 

“Hey, it was shortcake’s choice,” Gladio only shrugged, grinning in a way that said he was entirely too pleased with himself. “He thought a dinky little knife wasn’t going to, ahem, _cut it_, when it comes to a showdown with his employer. And he was right!”

“But a revolver!” Ignis retorted, completely disregarding the pun, which by now Prompto had learned was something of a special feat for him. “Honestly, Gladiolus. There were better weapons you might have provided.” At this, Prompto was pretty sure the swelling of warmth in his chest was a mix of relief and gratitude. Ignis didn’t even question his having a gun, just like he never questioned Prompto’s choice of keeping the blade. “What if the safety had failed? What if the gunpowder was damaged? You could at least have given him a laser gun, or—”

“It was me, I asked for something old school,” Prompto said quickly. When the others looked over at him, he squirmed. He must really get used to it – to make decisions inside his head, and then to own up to them too. “I asked for something not electronic. So my employer can’t control it.” He gave a quick smile, realizing just how unnecessary, even foolish, it was to refer to Verstael as ‘his employer’, now. Old habits die hard, he supposed. “If something were to fail, well, I was hoping the both of us wouldn’t fail at once.”

That calmed Ignis down. He was quiet when the nurse came to check his injuries and changed his bandages. When she left, he patted his bed, and Prompto came to perch at his side as Gladio touched up on his cosmetic make-up. It wasn’t painful, just uncomfortable, and Prompto was glad for Ignis’ slender fingers through his as Gladio worked on mending any rip in the silicone skin, then brushing over them with a fresh layer of freckles. 

A thick envelop from LUCIS Corp. came along with Ignis’ discharge papers. They’d looked over them together – Ignis’ full bill of health first, and then the official-looking letter from LUCIS Housing Department telling Prompto a furnished dorm room was reserved to him for a full year. Among all the flyers and brochures, Prompto found a post-it scrawled in Noctis’ awful chicken scratch. _‘It’s yours if you want it,’_ it said. _‘No pressure, though. But don’t think you can get away from me that easily. BFFs FOREVER’_. “Well,” Ignis said, when Prompto had shown him the note. “I suppose if he could have bedazzled the ‘BFFs FOREVER’ bit, he would have. I know what to give him for his next birthday.”

Prompto laughed, but it was absent-minded. Ignis didn’t miss this, of course. He let Prompto’s laughter quiet down, looking at him with that patient, understanding expression, the softest of smiles on his lips. “What do you think?” He asked, finally, reminding Prompto that he wasn’t supposed just to sit and soak in his presence silently forever. Oh, yes. He was supposed to make a Big Decision, wasn’t he? “You know you have a place with me, if you want it.” Prompto thought he’d imagined the uncertain ‘but’ hanging at the end of that sentence. A look at Ignis’ lowered head, the anxious edge of his profile, told him it wasn’t completely inside his head. “I know I’m not the most qualified at protecting you. I should like to think the danger had passed, but if you need a place to feel safe, there’s nowhere better than where Noctis could keep an eye on you.”

It was honestly baffling. Prompto had thought that the home was the most precious property that a person could acquire. The fact that Noctis had spare homes to fling around was kind of kind of cool really, but for Ignis to offer up his own space to a practical stranger who had tried to kill him twice? It was flattering and humbling all at once. “I need to think,” Prompto said, and he almost feel bad for saying it. “It’s such a big offer you made, you know? I don’t feel like I’d do it justice if I answer without really thinking about it.”

On the next day, Ignis was released from the hospital. Prompto sat at his side on the taxi home, but when they stopped in front of the complex, Prompto tapped on the screen to ask the taxi to wait. 

To say that Ignis was crestfallen would be an understatement. He looked _defeated_, so much so that even his hair seemed to lose its luster and incredible fluffiness. His eyes darted everywhere but Prompto, and this was the first time Prompto knew him to be reduced to staring at his feet. It pulled at something at Prompto’s core, and it was an unstoppable compulsion for Prompto to step forwards and take his hands. 

“Iggy, I want to be with you, I do,” he said in a rush. He was not used to saying ‘I want’, had never learned to, and yet now the words flowed from his lips as easily as the basest of functions. “But I want it to be my choice. I want to come to you as an equal, once I’ve learned all I can about the world… and my place in it. And the best place to start it is with LUCIS. You said it yourself, they’re the most open-minded and brilliant lots I could find in this whole country, aren’t they? It’d be silly to give that away. And so… when we move in together, when you think I’m ready—then maybe I won’t be just a responsibility. Someone you have to protect.”

“I know that’s not how you feel,” Prompto said quickly, reaching up to brush Ignis’ cheek when the man opened his mouth to speak. “But think. What would it be like if I come to you now, as I am? You’ve shown me the world and I _love_ it, but I haven’t even decided what I wanted to do in it. Now that nobody is trying to kill me, or you, I mean. I need perspectives. References. It’s like—it’s like taking pictures. Like planning a shot. I want to see everything else so I can see how to frame myself better. To frame _us_ better, even. I need to become my own person, Iggy. And I want you to discover it once I’ve learned a thing or two about myself first.”

The clock was ticking, and so was the bill on the taxi. It was the least of their concerns, though. Ignis bit his lip, and he was stroking Prompto’s cheek absently as he thought. In the end, Ignis’ thumb rested at the hollow at the corner of his eye – so tenderly, and when Prompto blinked and his eyelashes brushed Ignis’ fingertips, the intimacy was shattering. 

“I knew,” was what Ignis was saying. He pinched Prompto’s cheek lightly before pulling away, taking off his glasses and polishing them. Prompto knew Ignis was reeling, buying time to regain his composure, and he chose to say nothing about it. His heartbeats were steady though, so was his body temperature – so he wasn’t mad. “I knew you would never make the easy choice.” He smiled at Prompto then, and for the millionth time Prompto noted the way his beauty marks seemed to be strategically positioned to draw attention to his smile, to that one small crooked sharp tooth that never failed to cause a small stutter in Prompto’s core functioning. “I just hope you didn’t mean I’d have to get to know you all at once. It might be a lot for me to assume, but I suppose you wouldn’t mind me showing up at your doorstep from time to time?” His smile was a little rueful. “Or was our first attempt at a date so disastrous it’d dissuaded you from having another with me?”

“That was a date?” Yep, Prompto really needed to learn to filter his words better. Processor speed and conversational modules didn’t mean shit in a conversation like this. The moment the sentence was out of his mouth he covered it, and kind of wanted to follow that up with a punch to the teeth. “I mean, of course that was a date! That only happened to be a disaster! But it wasn’t your fault; if it’s not Verstael’s, then it was mine.” He paused, blinked, tried to put his words in order. Where’s the thesaurus module when you need it? “I-I mean. Of course, Ignis. I’ll be _sad_ if I don’t get to see you all the time. I want you in my life, you know. I’m not ready to give that up.”

Another would laugh at him, Prompto thought. He was an android, what did he know about being ‘sad’? But Ignis was not any other, and Ignis was full of earnest. “Then I will invite myself over, with the most boring plans,” he was saying. “Farmer’s market was only the first step. Next time, I might invite you to something equally as hippy.”

“Will it be a ceramics fair?” Prompto said immediately. He loved this new place he had, sliding along with Ignis’ jokes and allowing them to bounce off of him until they became an elaborate cat’s cradle of jokes that only the two of them could keep track of. “Because I know I have a lot of awful mugs to pick out. Just saying.”

Ignis groaned, but his eyes were gleaming. “If that’s what on your mind, I can hardly stop it. I can only come along to save you from awful impulses.” He held out his arms. “I’ll see you very soon, Prompto.”

It didn’t take long for Prompto to step into that offered embrace and return it, tightening his own hold around Ignis. It was different to hear his heartbeats with his ears, and not just scanning it with his sensors. It was different to soak up the heat from him than just viewing a graph of it with a heat scan. As Prompto stayed there and discovered new things about Ignis that his sensors had never picked up before – like the way his hair curled into the slightest of mullets at the back, or the particular scent of his sweat where it came in contact with the metal of his necklace – he knew that he would need a diary very soon.

He would have Ignis for every day in his life, and so every day was bound to be very special. And he couldn’t risk missing a single pixel of light in that whole tapestry of light that Ignis would make of his world.


End file.
